


though i told you that i loved you (you couldn't tell i was lying)

by fivesecrets



Series: for the last time verse [4]
Category: Men's Football RPF
Genre: Arguments, Lies, M/M, Panic Attacks, Repetitive Conversations, Self-Destruction, Self-Isolation, Semi-Public Sex, Sex Dreams, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2020-12-14 00:10:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21006461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fivesecrets/pseuds/fivesecrets
Summary: Honestly, the most annoying thing is the fact he doesn’t understand why everyone thinks the situation warrants arms-length surveillance during training. Football is more challenging without Julian’s scavenging runs that Kai could read without even so much as a glance, but he can do it. It’s just the looks he sees everyone else shooting him when they think he’s not paying attention, the concerned telepathy flickering between Lars and Sven when Kai spaces out during Bosz’s spiels. It’s stupid. He doesn’t like tactics, even when he appreciates their importance. He just wants to play football, he’s always been that way, it’s not like he’s fucked up or anything. It’s not like Julian leaving has hurt him implicitly.Or, in which Kai is completely okay with Julian’s transfer, until he can’t lie to himself anymore.





	though i told you that i loved you (you couldn't tell i was lying)

**Author's Note:**

> • Firstly, I'm really sorry this took so long, and I want to apologise in advance for how long parts 5 & 6 are going to take. My final year of school is doing its level best to kill me.  
• Secondly, I want to apologise for how awful this part is. It's truly horrific.  
• Thirdly, I want to thank you all for sticking with me so far. Here's to the final two parts.  
• As always, your comments are my motivation, even a simple one line thing means the world to me. I love you all.

_ **leverkusen, germany** _

Every time his thumb moves robotically to click on the Borussia Dortmund Instagram story, like he somehow expects its content to change even though he’s replayed it bordering fifty times, Kai feels the walls of his flat close in on him slightly more. It’s getting airless, oxygen depleting and swirling out of him from where he’s catatonic on the sofa, subconsciously holding his breath until black dots appear in his vision and he can pretend the heart strain isn’t from seeing Julian wearing yellow.

Maybe it’s tunnel vision, maybe Kai has the nerve to admit he’s obsessed with the pain that reverberates through him whenever his eyes naturally fall on his former best friend. The pain that reminds him that Julian’s badass flower that’s invaded his heart hasn’t wilted; its thorny stem is still relentlessly clasped tight around his heartstrings; it’s become a sort of saviour. His love for Julian is an unspoken, unexplored part of him, consumed everything he has and now Julian’s _gone_, yet it’s gotten to the stage that Kai doesn’t know who he _is _without him. Training commenced two weeks ago, and everyday Kai is searching for him, he’s everywhere at training, laughing, joking, throwing himself on his teammates like he always did at Leverkusen while the laugh that Kai still hears in the back of his mind rang out into the warm sticky summer air, or formed mist in the depths of winter. It never changed with him, he was just always _there _with some idiotic comment or something that would make Kai’s heart inexplicably beat so much faster.

The change in dynamics is enough to give him emotional whiplash. He thought he was dealing with it, thought he’d be prepared for Julian’s absence after the whirlwind that was their trip to Ibiza. It’s more embarrassing that Mitch has already adjusted to Sam’s departure, shifted the basis of their relationship to phone calls and stolen visits on off days without so much as a forlorn, wistful gaze at Sam’s empty spot in the changing rooms, while Kai’s stuck staring at social media, consuming himself in the media frenzy surrounding his crush as his heart continues to tear itself to pieces.

Honestly, the most annoying thing is he doesn’t understand why everyone thinks the situation warrants arms-length surveillance during training. Football is more challenging without Julian’s scavenging runs that Kai could read without even so much as a glance, but he can do it. It’s just the _looks _he sees everyone else shooting him when they think he’s not paying attention, the concerned telepathy flickering between Lars and Sven when Kai spaces out during Bosz’s spiels. It’s stupid. He doesn’t like tactics, even when he appreciates their importance. He just wants to play football, he’s always been that way, it’s not like he’s _fucked up _or anything. It’s not like Julian leaving has hurt him implicitly.

He might have snapped at Julian over the phone at three in the morning the previous night, but he should’ve known better than to ring Kai, intoxication or not. Kai probably let on too much of what plagues his mind after Julian drawled some bullshit about Kai befriending Jadon Sancho, but Julian wouldn’t have remembered. And if he did, maybe he’d view it as a threat. As happy as Julian thinks Kai is with his transfer, Kai’s entitled to not want to hear about all the fucking little details and all the people who are replacing him in Julian’s life, through Julian’s own fucking choice.

Part of him wants to poison Julian with jealousy, push him away until he has no option but to crawl back. He knows it’s immature, but he can’t stop the fantasy.

His phone, that had fallen down the side of the sofa cushions while he caught himself up in contemplation (he realises, only slightly tinged with disappointment, that he hadn’t managed to suffocate himself through holding his breath), rips through his brittle façade of peace with a notification of an incoming text. It takes some half-hearted scrabbling to retrieve it, but he’s aware of the concern flowing through the team and does not want to find himself with a broken door when Lars has knocked it down as punishment for not answering whatever team-wide text he’s sent this time.

If his heart still skips agonisingly when he reads Julian’s name on his phone screen, no one needs to know.

**Julian**: i got injured

It’s enough to force Kai upright, bones protesting from the sudden movement after he’d been lying motionless for so long. Spite shivers through him, nerves cutting the sensation short of reaching his fingers as he types out a message, sending it before he can think.

**Kai: **Is it bad?

**Julian: **i’m going to miss the super cup

Relief floods through him, quashed by remorse when he imagines the helplessness that tends to trap Julian whenever the older got injured back in Leverkusen. He understands the desperation to play, the frustration of being separated, useless and unable to help the team, even when his own desire to avoid having to see Julian play in that godawful blinding shirt weighs heavily on his mind. Putting it off until the opening of the Bundesliga gives him another week to _get over whatever the fuck he definitely isn’t feeling._

Whatever that nameless emotion is must captivate him enough to write itself into his response.

**Kai:** Oh. Sorry.

**Julian:** it’s okay, i’ll be okay

**Julian:** could i drive over and see you tomorrow?

They haven’t seen each other since Kai climbed into bed with him on his final night in Ibiza, the closest they got is sensuous video calls that Kai can’t make himself stop. 

His eyes flicker around his flat, messy, clothes that he can’t be bothered to wash strewn all over the living room, remains of the food he’s attempted to cook still out on the countertops. He doesn’t know why everything he tries to eat tastes like sawdust.

**Kai:** Sorry, I’m busy right now.

**Kai:** I have a guest over. They’re staying for another four days.

He doesn’t know if lying will curb the primitive urge to elicit self-resentment as revenge for Julian’s betrayal. There’s no way it will, not when Julian doesn’t feel the same way about him, yet desire for revenge writes over his sense of logic.

**Julian:** oh, okay. have fun!

Being forced into thinking about Julian drags him back to square one, his body falling back against the sofa and eyes fixating lazily on something in the distance. His appetite vanished, not caring about the inevitable berating the club nutritionist will set on him the following day. He’s lost a stone since the last time he was weighed before the final match against Hertha Berlin (his stomach cringes painfully at the reminder of the way Julian’s hot breath skipped over the skin of his neck) but it doesn’t matter. It’s just fat. He’ll get it back once Sam breaks his dietary resolve, like he does every year.

It takes a scarily long time to remember that Sam is in Groningen now, so there won’t be any of the customary sugary binge. That’s what pulls Kai’s head down, hitting the armrest with a less-than-gentle thud which he couldn’t care less about, especially if it’ll help knock those intrusive thoughts from his mind. Sam’s gone, meaning he loses something he always looked forward to secretly every single season, and Sam being gone loops his thoughts to Julian’s transfer.

It’s a vicious cycle of unhelpful thought, but it won’t kill him. He’ll get used to being without the two of them, assist the new signings with their settling in, and by the time he’s pulled the new home kit over his head on the opening matchday, it’ll be like there wasn’t someone lifechanging there, like his absence isn’t felt in some sort of agonising guttural throb.

At some point, Mitch texts, asking him if he wants to play Fortnite with him, Sam and Julian. His teammate seems so excited about the possibilities of streaming, Kai almost feels a pang of guilt as he fakes an illness and drops his phone down next to him.

He’s well aware he should eat something, but even opening his fridge elicits the awful sensation of almost-vomiting. Walking feels like such an effort, a complete paradox to the moisturiser he slathered on in the morning to give his cheeks a rosy glow to deflect concern. Judging by the completely lack of subtly in the way Mitch, Lars and Sven had smiled when he pushed the door of the locker room earlier, refusing to fine him even though he was late, his tactic had worked.

Doze takes him once he’s back on the couch, all the strain of acting like he’s not feeling the weight of the world slung over his shoulders more acutely ripping his body to shreds.

He isn’t sure what time it is when he comes to, except for the fact the solitary light coming in through the open window is from the building opposite. Exhaustion sends him into delusion, his hands scrabbling along the floor for his phone and pressing Julian’s contact before he can feel the dread of calling his former best friend wash over him. The clock on his wall says it’s gone midnight.

“Hey,” he says, well aware his voice is doing that thing it always used to when he gets tired, when his tone softens, and he sometimes dared to think he saw Julian’s walls collapse behind his eyes. He can’t, almost doesn’t want to, rid himself of it when he asks Julian if he was sleeping.

“I wasn’t asleep yet,” Julian answers, sounding just as delicate as Kai does and _fuck_, Kai does not want to think about that, does not even want to begin considering the repercussions of something more than fatigue evoking itself in their late-night conversation. His alibi, his lie, springs to the forefront of his hazy mind, his escape to avoid _this _and hurt Julian simultaneously.

“I can’t talk for long,” he stops, half because he doesn’t know what to say and half because he knows Julian will associate it with his lie. “But I wanted to wish you get well soon.”

“Thanks, I wish I could come and see you, but I understand if you’re busy with your guest,” Julian’s tone etches closer to something like babbling, his topic closer to what Kai has become irrationally terrified of. He knows he can’t avoid Julian forever, at the absolute latest Leverkusen play Dortmund on the fifth matchday of the new season, but somehow, it’s like living in this imaginary universe he’s created for himself, where he’s lead Julian to believe it’s inhabited by people Kai has chosen over him, is so much easier than the truth. “Who is it, by the way?”

A silent beat deafens him as he fights for an excuse. “Oh, um, yeah--- no one you’d know.”

Julian accepts it before Kai can commence chastising himself for sounding like a stammering idiot.

“Yes?” Kai says, “sorry Jule, my guest is impatient. I’ve got to go, but I’ll see you soon. I promise.”

Kai’s pretty sure he’s never made an emptier promise in his entire life, and even with his allusion to sex, there’s still the cheeky, unhurt lilt to Julian’s voice as he asks for some sort of _relief. _It’s frustrating, the constant, inescapable reminders of his continuous failure when it comes to Julian: his failure to confess, his failure to be good enough to make Julian stay, and now his failure to convey his own words with enough malice to even _hurt _him.

“You’re always adorable when you say that,” his voice, not him, gets out. Whatever mystical entity that has seized his vocal chords doesn’t relent. “I might not be able to call you tomorrow, I’m, you know, going to be busy.”

His thumb stabs the ‘end call’ button before another one of Julian’s breaths can even echo down the line.

The black mist reforms in his eyes as he stumbles towards his bedroom, swimming closer together as his head hits the pillow. He thinks it’s closer to being knocked out than drifting to sleep.

Morning comes before true rest does, grogginess weighing him down as he just about makes the effort to climb out of bed. The overcast morning further deepens his innate bad mood, sensuous humidity forming a glean of sweat on the surface of his skin, the kind that stays even after he tries to shower it away. He feels as though his internal organs have been rearranged overnight, his heart is beating off-time, his stomach a lie-down away from being okay and ejecting anything he’s consumed in the past forty-eight hours.

Somehow, Kai manages to arrive at training on time. Most of the team has convened in the centre of the locker room, seemingly ribbing Lukas for an awful haircut, so no one notices when he creeps to his spot and quietly changes.

No one except Mitch.

“Morning!” His friend says, grinning at him with such seeming delight that is way out of place for nine in the morning. 

“Hi,” he says, attempting to conceal the rough tone of exhaustion. “Is Sam back in Leverkusen and I don’t know about it, or something?”

“No,” Mitch’s grin turns devilish, to the point Kai throws a spare shirt at his face just to avoid the remark entirely. “Fuck, Kai, who taught you respect?”

“I have respect for Lars and Kieβling, not you.” He says over his shoulder, passing the tribal activities of his teammates (Lukas might be dead in the centre, he has no idea) and even manages to escape being hauled into the group, jogging over the grass of the training field towards Bosz.

“Morning,” Bosz says, handing Kai some cones and briefly explaining how he wants them set up, before returning to whatever conversation he was having with one of the assistant coaches. The coaching setup at Leverkusen is fantastic, Bosz slinging an arm over his shoulders and checking he was okay during the first training session.

He’d told the truth then. It was before the pain set in.

But pain passes, it’s unfair of him to trouble everyone with it. One day, he’ll see a photo of Julian on social media, wearing the golden eyesore of Borussia Dortmund, and it’ll be an object of apathy. Heartbreak isn’t life-changing. It isn’t, in the long run, important.

How can it be, when the moment he’s got the ball at his feet, sprinting towards the goal as Jonathan tries to close him down, he feels okay again? If it meant something, it wouldn’t disappear when he feels the wind rush against his face, hot sun beat down on his skin as Lars’ shouts ring out into the air. If it meant something, it would shroud him, shadow him, weigh him down at every time. 

Maybe that’s what Julian wants, but Kai won’t let him have that satisfaction. If Julian’s in Dortmund, cursing Kai with fantasies of being almost grieved, believing he holds more of an impact than he does in truth, he’s deluded. On the pitch, his footsteps are already trodden over by the studs of someone else.

It’s just off the pitch it all turns to relative shit.

He wonders if he should drive back to Mitch’s and play Fortnite for way too many hours than his mother would deem healthy, but his friend disappears with a slightly-mysterious aura and a knowing smirk gracing his lips. It’s suggestive and another cue designed for Kai to suffer a small stab of missing Julian, because the two of them would definitely have secretly followed Mitch, giggling the whole drive back to their friend’s house like three-year olds.

If he’s speeding as he drives back to his block, no one catches him. There’s no mistaking there’s an unfamiliar scrunching sensation building in the pit of his stomach, his left leg starting to shake. Appetite seems impossible. Aside from three spoonfuls of cereal he practically force-fed himself this morning, he hasn’t eaten in over a day, yet his throat still feels like it’d eject anything he tried to get down himself. It feels like his insides are starting to line themselves with sharp-edged stone.

He has to lean against the side of the elevator because his legs feel like they’re about to give in, meeting eyes with his reflection in the wall-sized mirror opposite. His thoughts are beginning to dissociate from him, he knows that eyes staring back at him are his, piercing into his body that seems to be malforming with every second he continues, but he couldn’t recognise them if he had no idea. The slight tremor has grown to encompass his entire being, to the point it takes him almost five minutes to unlock the fucking door to his apartment.

It’s exactly as he left it this morning, but suddenly the leftover food he’d tried to pick at the previous evening emits a stench that causes his stomach to roll violently. Sudden nausea rips through him, churning its terrorising commotion and just about lasting until he can hunch himself over the toilet, remains of whatever he’s managed to keep in his system coming back up with a disgusting aftertaste that he can’t quite rid himself of.

Vomiting seems to do nothing to rid himself of the paralysing onset of emotion. His arm rests against the toilet bowl, stench of sick irrelevant in comparison to the blur that’s clouding his eyes, the heat that’s creeping like a stalker over his skin and the rope tying itself around his neck, knot tightening like it’s being pulled by a thief with no mercy. He can’t breathe, can’t even think.

Blood pounds in his ears, he can feel his heart beating like it’s from a distance, some secluded part of him he doesn’t want to uncover for fear of what he might discover there. His hand tightens against the vomit-stained porcelain, trying to clasp on to some semblance of normality like he’s able to pretend this isn’t happening to trick himself out of it.

He’s suspended in a chasm between real and artificial, floating with no real chance of moving anywhere else, but the coastlines of the two worlds are starting to mix messily in his mind. He isn’t sure if the water down his face is sweat, tears, or blood from a cut he doesn’t know he has. He doesn’t know if he’s still keeled over on his bathroom floor, or shrunk into the peril of his own mind, but he does know it’s ridiculous and he’d rather die than have anyone see him like this.

Whoever’s got the reins of the rope slits another knot around Kai’s throat. Oxygen seems to evade him, his heartbeats straining in his chest with their urgency as his hand detaches from the toilet bowl, whacking his head on the foot of the shower cubicle as he falls to the floor.

Instantly, the humidity of the bathroom is overbearing, lending itself to kill Kai faster (he’s not sure what the fuck is happening, but he’s pretty certain he’s dying) and the panic drags him to his feet. He stumbles towards the kitchen counter, cringing painfully as a plate smashes onto the floor from the sheer force of his decontrol. Shards of china litter the floor, circling him in their perfect disarray, as the sound of the place echoes in his mind. He swings mindlessly for another one, a chunk cracking away beautifully in his own hand from his troubled disquiet, lodging itself in the curve of his wrist before falling to the floor and breaking into the tiniest pieces. It’s the soundtrack to his pain, a melody of destruction married with the screaming, relentless headache pounding its radiation from the unreachable centre of his head. 

He might cut his foot a thousand times as he stumbles to the living room, curling up around a tugged-free sofa cushion as he watches apparent cut on his wrist ooze blood like it’s some sort of sick therapy.

Nothing can interject, scream its voice of peace over the intrusive thoughts manifesting themselves tenfold, suffering the strangest disparity of recognising his symptoms, the resilient urge to fight his demons that assisted him to where he is today, and the crippling realisation that he’s _completely fucking useless._

He can’t stay here, but to go somewhere else is only admitting that Julian won. _Julian,_ who’s scent from a million times they started watching a film and ended fucking on the sofa still lingers, Kai’s arms tightening around the incriminating object instead of letting it go like what’s probably healthy. To leave would only be broadcasting his secret to the world, telling everyone that he was completely crazy in love with his teammate and that his departure has done its level best to murder him. He’s famous now, and that means he can’t go anywhere without people noticing him, publicising him, surrounding him when all he wants to do is burrow himself underground and let even himself forget he exists.

Julian wouldn’t remember him to revel in his fucking stupid victory. Maybe that’s what hurts the most.

His lapse into dark thought counterbalance him, seems to pluck him out of the spiral of anxiety. Pressing his arm against the leather sofa cushions stains them a wet, dark red that reverts his attention to the still-bleeding gash (that’s way worse than his consternated brain could comprehend) stinging slightly, and he looks blindly towards the kitchen to see the white remnants of his episode.

His feet are fine, but the mess causes a sickening twist in the depths of his stomach and he has to scare himself into vomit-sobriety. He doesn’t know what just overtook him, maybe it’s the alternative to the incontrollable agony he endured the morning he found out about Julian’s transfer that he subdued by running, but he can already feel the mental scars baring their teeth.

Some egoistic part of him clamours to text Julian about it, but he knows it’ll only motivate him to throw his phone off the balcony of his flat and pray it gets crushed by an onrushing car. He finds his kitbag lying atop the amalgamation of breakage, phone thankfully undamaged.

He smiles when he sees the last message that she sent him, a photo from a shoot she did on the Cologne skyline. She is one of the most beautiful women he’s ever laid his eyes on, eternally grateful at how much she’s sacrificed to let the rumours fly about their relationship, enabling him to fuck _him _every night and no one to even commence suspecting anything.

**Kai: **hey, are you free?

One of their inside jokes is based on the sporadic and nonsensical amount of time it takes for Sophia to reply to his texts (once, he asked where she wanted to go for dinner on the Wednesday, only to receive a reply on the Saturday when he was in Munich), so he’s half-surprised when his phone buzzes within two minutes.

**Sophia: **yeah, class ended ten minutes ago. all good?

**Kai: **not really. how quickly can you get here?

**Sophia: **if you let me steal your car, five minutes

**Sophia: **joking babe

**Sophia: **see you in twenty

He spends almost the entire twenty minutes attempting to patch up the angry laceration on his arm, swearing aloud as he swipes antiseptic over it, bandages it in such an ugly way he knows Sophia is going to roll her eyes at him the second she steps through the door.

It isn’t quite that instant, because the first thing she sees is the wreckage of Kai’s utensils on the hard floor. She’s barely uttered a hello before she’s on her knees, daintily helping him sweep up the shards and definitely _not _side-eyeing him as they work.

“How was class?” He asks.

“Don’t try and bullshit me with small talk,” she responds, scraping the metal noisily into the bin. “We both know there’s a problem here, and I’m not leaving until we’ve dealt with it.”

“I don’t think it’s going to be that easy.”

Sophia isn’t looking at him, back turned as she disposes of more pieces of broken plate with a clatter. But there’s something that slumps her shoulders, maybe disappointment in him, frustration at his fucking inability to get over something that isn’t remotely a big deal in his walk of life. 

“You told me everything that happened in Barcelona when we were in Mykonos,” she says once she turns back to him, smiling softly despite the turmoil she can’t quite conceal from her face. He remembers it, relaxing on the beach with her, the epitome of a perfect couple, playing their deception with all their months of practice to anyone who bothered to look at them, while he poured his heart out to her privately. “And I didn’t dare ask, but I know something happened in Ibiza. You’ve been walking around with a semi-permanent aroused blush ever since.”

“We fucked before we even made it to Ibiza,” Kai admits, and he sees rather than hears the precise moment Sophia cottons on to his meaning, because it’s accompanied by the flick of the coffee machine switch. “He came to my hotel room on my birthday to talk things out with me, and I ended up fucking him.”

“What did he say to you?” Sophia says, not even bothering to hide the attention she’s paying to the machine. She doesn’t look angry, but she’s always had a poker face. She also doesn’t look surprised. Kai isn’t sure which is worse.

“He made up some bullshit about not being able to find the time to tell me, even though Mitch and Sam knew. Jannis knew. Most of the fucking team knew, but I didn’t. I lost it with him because he outed us to Mitch, Sam and Jannis, not the team, thank fuck, but still, without my consent or knowledge, but he had this look about him---.” Kai’s never been more grateful for the noise the coffee machine makes, because it’s enough to distract Sophia for two minutes while she pours them drinks, leads them to the sofa before finally training her calculating eyes on him. “He laced his fingers in my hair and I couldn’t stop myself.”

“What happened after?”

“I felt this surge of guilt I hadn’t felt since the first time we had sex. He was lying there, eyes barely open and still panting and I didn’t know what to do because all I wanted to do was kiss him gently. I pushed him out of the room and cried on and off for about three hours.”

“But he thought everything was okay?”

“Yeah,” Kai answers elusively, mind casting itself back to walking into the hotel dining room and trying to ignore the twinge in his heart when he thought he saw Julian’s face light up. “I didn’t act like it wasn’t. It was still during the time when it was okay to be feeling like that, when it wasn’t embarrassing to admit to myself what I felt about it all.” Sophia’s eyebrows furrow, and there’s a terrifying moment when Kai’s sure she’s about to challenge him, drowns out her protest before she can voice it. “The first night in Ibiza we slept together, and it just felt so _different_.”

“In a bad way?” Sophia says, swallowing her coffee thickly.

“No,” and there it is. The barrage of emotion he’s built a dam around, built his life in the flood plain but there’s nothing he can do now to avoid the onslaught. It flows over him, submerging him, its familiar, messy comfort a horrible thing to be used to. “It was so gentle. Almost like we were together.”

Sophia rolls her eyes melodramatically at him, and it takes him a second to place that he’s smiling like some dopey idiot.

“I made him almost come in the swimming pool,” he says flatly just as Sophia raises her mug to her lips. He’s deprived of the comedic element of watching her spit out the coffee, but he does elicit a snort that has him collapsing against the armrest in a fit of giggles, a complete antithesis to the panic-stricken him of half an hour ago that hangs over him like an unwanted shadow. “We had a lot of sex and it was just--- not like us.”

“You had so much sex--,”

“Not like that.” He cuts her off, flashing an apology, “We’d never been so open with each other before.”

“It’s always darkest before the dawn,” Sophia mutters. Kai doesn’t know if he was meant to hear it.

“The problem is, I want it.” Kai blurts out. He’s skirted around saying the words to anyone for so long, discrediting his own fucking mind when thoughts cross it (which happened with scary regularity when Julian’s eyes would hold that _fucking soft gaze _in them). “I think I’m in love with him, and I hate it.”

“I know,” Sophia says. “And you’ve been a complete fucking idiot. You won’t tell him,” she pauses, and he has to nod, he can’t lie to her now. “And god knows he won’t tell you. But you can’t do this, Kai, it’s going to kill you--- I’m going to assume you had some sort of panic attack.”

“I don’t know what it was,” he admits, “all I know is I was throwing up and couldn’t get control of myself.”

“Because of him?”

“I don’t know,” he lies. 

“Was it something you’d willingly put yourself through, all for the occasional night of sex with him?”

It’s a genuine question. He could say yes, she wouldn’t question it, and the temptation to do so, the ability to allow himself to give into that helpless want whenever he craves it is rifer than he expected. It’s so stupid, how every time he imagines seeing him his insides seem to squeeze into an objectification of fear, but when they’re together it’s like nothing has changed. He doesn’t know which is the lie.

“He said he wanted to come and visit you?”

Kai nods, voice failing him slightly. Her gaze is doing its utmost to tear into him.

“And you told him you had a guest staying for four days. Why did you do that?”

“When I heard he wanted to see me I just shut down and my brain fought to find an excuse,” Kai admits. She has this mundane of digging the deepest truths out of him, interrogating him until he’s raw and the words are out in the open, and he can never get them back.

“If Jule knocked on the door of your flat right now, what would you do?”

Kai’s torn between worrying about the lingering stench of sick and the bandaged cut from his injury, pushing Julian away, and the most probable answer of letting Julian fuck him into next week for the billionth time. Judging by the way Sophia’s expression darkens, he was to scramble to check he didn’t mutter it aloud.

“You’d fuck him,” she says eventually. It must be his embarrassed silence.

“I wouldn’t plan to,” he stammers, for whatever futile shit it’s worth. “But he’ll do something tiny, and I’ll just be gone. I don’t know why it happens.”

“Yes, you do. It happens because, in your own words you said you’re in love with him, and you wouldn’t know any better.”

“I hate it.”

“You can stop it,” she says, “all you have to do is text him that you don’t want anything to do with him and it ends.”

“I don’t know how to lie to him.”

“So instead, you’re lying to yourself that you’re moving on. I think you should cut him out, if only just so you can get used to him not being here anymore, and then if you decide it’s worth it, try to rebuild the bridge.”

“You wouldn’t tell me this if you thought it was a bad idea?” Kai says quietly, already pulling his phone out of his pocket. There’s Julian’s contact picture, all messy hair from one of the morning-afters when he looked especially beautiful and Kai was especially fucked.

It evokes the urge to hurt him.

**Kai: **I’ve found someone else.

He presses send on the message before he can even think it through. Sophia’s leant across, face drained of colour as Kai’s heart threatens to beat out of his chest.

The _delivered _changes to _seen._

His urge increases tenfold.

**Kai: **I don’t want anything to do with you anymore.

His thumb presses ‘block contact.’

The enormity of his lie hits him, its force delayed by fucking idiocy, and the next thing Kai knows is he’s staring at the ceiling.

• • • • • • 

Sleep eludes him, his eyelids refusing to get heavy as the clock hands tick through the hours, panic slowly surging through his mind as he remembers the double session that’s mandatory waiting for him once dawn breaks. Lars had texted them about a change in club personnel, his speak for ‘make sure you’re there early,’ and with every passing minute his body remains stubbornly awake, he begins to dread morning more.

About three in the morning he gets up, wanders out onto his balcony overlooking one of the nicer suburbs of Leverkusen. At times like this, when the city was dead and there wasn’t anything detracting his attention, he could see Julian’s apartment, several floors higher into the sky, a couple of streets away. It’s still there, but irrelevant now Julian isn’t.

He wonders if the city knows what it’s lost. How it, along with the club, along with Kai, as a collective, they failed. He knows it isn’t inscribing its failure on the infrastructure, dimming the lights of the BayArena overlooking the city in mourning, and given his words mere hours ago, he shouldn’t care. But he does. He wants to be reminded of who he, this city, who they loved and lost.

And in Kai’s case, continued to love anyway.

He pulls a jacket over his pyjamas, heads out into the street. The temptation to ponder old times is strong, memories of when he’d meet up with Julian in the dead of night when they had days off the following morning, play football in a park way too loudly for the surrounding civilisation. He remembers when they’d stagger back to Kai’s flat, Julian’s hands unabashedly touching him despite the potential of being caught, and then he’d get fucked by his best friend until the sun was well up. They’d wake in the afternoon, fuck lazily, and then Julian would go home and Kai would still get that damn flutter in his stomach.

Fatigue takes his legs as he falls onto a bench by the edge of the park he used to run so freely around. He’s so fixated on his envision of the two of them sprinting around, night wind rushing through their hair, he doesn’t notice the woman, blonde hair bouncing, who crosses the road to walk away from him. If he did, maybe it’d spur him back to his house, the fear of being caught of somewhere strangely intimate too humiliating.

He’s grateful he’s forgotten his phone, because he might’ve done something stupid like call Julian and take back everything he said earlier.

By the time he crashes back into his flat an hour later, his exhaustion is powerful enough to claim him. He’s awake barely ninety minutes later, forcing himself into the shower, slapping his face to give some semblance of colour.

Most of the team have known him since he was a kid, so he’s suspicious they might corner him the second he enters the locker room, his eyes might recount the previous night’s dramatics and Lars would follow it like a film, but he’s greeted with professional smiles, his teammates sitting orderly in the dressing room, and Bosz in the centre, chatting avidly with a blonde woman.

“Am I late?” He asks Mitch as he takes his seat underneath his name.

“I don’t think so. I don’t know what’s going on.”

He shoots Mitch another look as the final few members of the team straggle through the door and take their designated places. There isn’t time for any other conversation, Lars stands up and shoots them a glare that briefly causes Kai to reminisce about his old biology teacher, quickly introducing them to Lotta Schneider, the new member of the Leverkusen social media team who will be writing articles on them for the website.

His eyes roll from Lars to Lotta, taking her in and trying to work out where he knows her from. The name, the startlingly blonde hair, the ever-so-slight characteristic of tilting her head… it’s weirdly familiar.

It must just remind him of someone else.

He doesn’t stop to converse with her (he thinks Lukas might be laying it on a bit thick with her) beyond a polite hello and introduction, but he feels her eyes piercing the back of his head as they head out for training.

But when he turns back, she’s talking to the notorious admin of the English Twitter account. He shakes his head, minimal sleep already beginning to set in after ten minutes.

His fitness is good enough to bullshit his way through all of the first session and two thirds of the second, before Daley nutmegs him during the training match and the sudden change of direction sends swarms of black over his sight. He fakes it for probably another fifteen metres before he can’t help but notice that his heart is beating too quickly, his legs have begun to shake and he’s fucking keeled over before he can refocus and regain that flawless composure the media won’t shut up about.

Sven’s on him before any other thought can cross his mind, someone’s yelling at the photographers to ‘stop fucking taking photos of him,’ and it’s definitely attention whoring when Kai _wants _them too. Wants them to publish how much of a fucking shit player he is.

“Are you okay? Kai, can you hear me?” All the voices, people talking over one another, they mix in his head and surround him, bite him tauntingly at all the people who are okay, who don’t allow themselves to give him to stupid pain like he does.

“Just… leave…. me alone…” he breathes out, hands finding the railings that separate them from the fans during open practices. “I’m okay.”

He thinks he hears the beginning of a sarcastic comment, but someone must glare them down. The concern vanishes, silence replacing it with its harrowing reverberation of how _fucking empty _he is. Worried hands leave his waist, his only support the barrier and the shadow of someone standing behind him, the only sounds beyond his heart that is still thumping are the distant rush of a resumed game and the team doctor loudly discussing his condition with Bosz.

“Kai,” the doctor says eventually. Kai didn’t even realise the prior conversation had ended, “can you walk?”

“Yeah,” he says, trying not to turn too fast. His face is scarlet, he can see that from miles away when he catches sight of himself reflected in the complex windows. He’s half being held back, maybe they think he’s psychotic and might sprint at the wall, break the glass with a short flick of his studs and then all those fucking media people will have a field day reporting his breakdown.

Julian, sitting in that fucking yellow shirt in that smoky black locker room, laughing as he and fucking Jadon Sancho scroll through BILD’s article on Kai, rolls through his mind. It elicits the bubble that’s a precursor to a scream, but then the doctor’s arm tightens around his shoulders and the assistant coach jogs to catch up with them and he swallows it down. They can’t know about what losing Julian has done. He can’t tell them the extent he’s gone to in order to avoid him. How it’s gone further than just bending the truth slightly this time, and it’s not something he can just _get back_.

“Kai? Kai!” The assistant coach exclaims, snapping Kai back to attention. The first thing he registers is the subliminal smell of old sweat no amount of air freshener can quite conceal, he’s in the locker room, being sat on a bench like some idiot who can’t keep control of themselves. “Fucking hell, kid, are you even listening to me?”

“Yeah, sorry,” he says, hoping he doesn’t sound absence and the assistant doesn’t start sending out some sort of search party for him. They might find his sanity, but he couldn’t think of anything worse than possessing it at the moment. He just wants to revel in his pain and have no one else know about it. “I just got almost no sleep last night.”

“I could tell. You played like absolute shit today. Peter was considering sending you home.”

“I thought I did okay?” Kai says aloud, before he can stop himself.

“You mistimed all but one of your tackles today. Sven stopped marking you for that goal purely to see if you’d mock him for his mistake.”

The event he’s talking about only happened an hour before, but Kai feels like it’s a distant memory. Like his first training session here as a ten-year-old, nervous and shivering, before Sam approached him to complete a passing drill. For all his success, the slowly spreading fame that has expanded outside of Germany, he wants to go back (even with the shit buck teeth) and warn himself against this, foretell the future and leave Julian before he got the chance to do it first.

“I just need to get some more sleep. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“Damn right it won’t. You shouldn’t have come today. I know Lars can be quite strict with  
attendance when there’s a team meeting prior to training,” the coach cuts himself off with a chuckle, “but we’d understand. You look awful.”

“Thanks.” Kai deadpans.

“Nice to see you’ve still got the same sarcasm from when I coached you as a kid.”

The assistant coach trails off into a spiel that Kai doesn’t want to listen to as the doctor fusses around him, sticking a thermometer into his ear for seemingly no reason. He can’t help but wish Mitch was here, that he could make a comment that hits far too close to home but that he knows his friend wouldn’t think twice about. But Mitch is still out on the field, where he should want to be, but really, he’d rather hibernate in his flat and only emerge to let Sophia in to use his coffee machine.

“How did you get here this morning?” The doctor finally speaks, cutting through the drone of the assistant coach.

“I walked,” he lies. He drove, didn’t want to face Lars’ wrath due to meeting Lotta this morning, but he knows someone would insist on driving him home if they knew. 

“Go home,” he’s told. “Come back tomorrow with a good night’s sleep behind you.”

In the distance, he thinks he can hear Bosz calling the squad for a debrief, and the fear of seeing all his teammates is too much. He’s almost out of the complex when someone walks out from the room at the end and he runs smack into them.

“Sorry!” He says instinctively, steadying himself. He looks down to see Lotta sprawled awkwardly on the ground, struggling to regain her balance. “Oh, fuck, sorry, um, Miss.”

“Miss?” She giggles, accepting the hand he offers her to help her up. “I thought I was introduced as Lotta!”

The team are in the dressing room. He can hear their antics, even though they’re probably too tired for the thumping music some of them are especially partial to.

“Yes, um, sorry again, I have to go,” he stammers out, eyes dropping from her face and the knowing look she’s giving him. He wonders how much observation she’s paid to him in the past, maybe she’s got a sister who has a crush on him, maybe _she _has a crush on him? He doesn’t want to think about it, dives into his car and drives away, hoping no one notices as he pulls out of the training ground.

(Lotta smirks to herself as he watches him scamper across the car park. He doesn’t know yet, but she’s got experience in the same department Kai is suffering at that precise moment.)

It’s a miracle he doesn’t get pulled over by the police for how erratic his driving probably is. His parking is all wonky, but he can’t bring himself to care, he’s already on the phone to Sophia as he trips up the stairs leading to his apartment. He can’t slow down, she’s screaming at him to enunciate and tell her what the problem is, but he can’t. He has to get everything out, projectile vomit the words out of his system and deal with the mess later.

He thinks he registers her telling him she’s on her way before the line falls dead.

Whatever he does peters out of his memory like he’s dropped it through a sieve, which is why when there’s a knock on the door and both Sophia and Mitch are standing there, he’s momentarily confused. Only his recent texts to his teammate tell him otherwise.

“What happened today?” Mitch asks, “you just almost blacked out and then you went into the dressing room and by the time we got there, you were gone.”

Sophia must have not picked up on the extent of Kai’s problems, because she’s looking between the two of them with an obvious frown forming on her forehead. Kai doesn’t think she’s met Mitch any more than a handful of times, but the two of them already seem to be riding a telepathic wavelength because they both take one of Kai’s arms and lead him towards the sofa.

“Thank you,” he breathes, once Sophia returns with three mugs of coffee. “The two of you are my best friends. I knew I could count on you, you’re always there for me, you wouldn’t leave me, and I want you to know that I appreciate that.”

“Look at me,” Sophia says. “You don’t look drunk.”

“What the fuck do you think we get up to at training?” Mitch tries to joke. Sophia makes a comment about the standard of their defending that is far too engrained into the strained atmosphere to be truly amusing, yet they’re otherwise silent. Waiting for Kai to make the next move. 

“I didn’t sleep very well last night,” his voice says for him, seemingly twigging he hasn’t actually answered Mitch’s question yet. “There isn’t anything wrong with me, I’m not sick or anything like that. The shit at training today was purely because I was tired.”

“Why didn’t you ring in sick?”

“Because Lars would’ve killed me,” he answers, looking at Mitch to back him up. “There’s a new woman working in the media department.”

“Who Kai’s already knocked over,” Mitch says, winking at Kai when he spins his head around. “She came in looking a bit ruffled and Sven asked her what was up, and she said that you’d ran into her.”

“I’d make a joke about how he always knew how to make the ladies fall for him,” Sophia says, voice still sounding a little thick for Kai to fully appreciate the weight of the joke over his concern. “However, I don’t really think that’s of use to him.”

“I’m not gay!” Kai protests, “bisexuality exists, Miss Weber.”

“God, he’s pissed off,” Sophia giggles, “he only ever calls me that when he’s mad.”

Her and Mitch fall into such casual conversation about Sam and her latest university crush (Kai’s forever grateful that she’s agreed to ‘date’ him until he’s 21 and able to use her as proof of his ‘heterosexuality’) that it actually causes Kai to dissociate. But it feels okay. He’s glad they’re there, filling his apartment with loud chatter he hasn’t heard since Julian--- _no._

Like Sophia said, he needs to start cutting Julian out of his thoughts. He wonders what Julian thought of the message that throbbed fiery pain like a break-up to send, that glistens behind his eyelids when he tries to sleep, holding itself slightly out of reach while Kai falls into shards. It happens every night. Everyone says it’s getting better. But it hasn’t happened _yet_, and Kai doesn’t know if he can hold out much longer, or if he’ll snap and drive to Dortmund just to fuck Julian into the middle of next week.

“Hey, you know what we should do,” he says, cutting through the conversation the other two are still having. “We have a day off on Saturday, so tomorrow night we should go out clubbing. I haven’t been in so long, and the season starts soon. It’d be nice to have one final night out.”

“I’d love to, but Sam’s coming for a couple of days.”

“When did I ever say he wasn’t welcome?” Kai retorts kindly, already smiling at the thought of his oldest friend being piss drunk. Memories of him standing on a table resurfaces, alongside the cringe at his attempt to sing something Kai remembers thinking sounded like a cat being dragged through a hedge’s rendition of _Take on Me_.

“Okay, I’ll check if he wants to come. Sophia, are you down?”

“Of course. Someone’s got to keep an eye on you idiots,” she grins.

That’s how they end up carpooling to a club in a small town an hour away from Leverkusen the following evening, Sam and Mitch curled up in the backseat as Kai flits through practically every song on his playlist, unable to find the one that fits his mood before Sophia leans over from where she’s driving to knock his phone out of his hand. It’s not even late by the time they get there, the club barely half-full, but Sam makes a beeline for the bar and orders three rounds of definitely toxic shots. They’re fucked within thirty minutes.

He vaguely remembers occasions where he’s been sobered by a scolding rant from Sophia. Yet tonight, she lets him have this, knows he needs this, even though despite the alcohol fuzzing his vision he can see the concern in her eyes. He wants to thank her over the music, even though it’ll draw attention to them standing on the edge of the dancefloor, because she’s fucking brilliant. He’s been through hell with his feelings, doesn’t know if he’s scraping the cuts of rock bottom, if he already is or the fucking terrifying thought that he might not have yet, but she’s been there for him since the day they met. 

Thoughts of thanking her capture him for too long she’s disappeared into the moving mass of increasingly drunk bodies by the time comes for him to voice them. Sam breaks through the mess instantly, brandishing another bottle of something clear that burns the back of his throat as he downs it. 

Somewhere, a bottle breaks, glass shattering across the floor, accompanied by drunken, dramatic screams. 

Music carries him obliviously away from his friends. It’s his sweet escape, serving its purpose of helping him forget perfectly until he collides with someone. Blonde hair swims into focus, slack against a pale forehead with sweat like _he _always did on nights like this one, and it’s definitely unhealthy how his body immediately reverts into a state of shock. Alcohol snaps from warming him to icing his blood, but it isn’t Julian. He’s conscious enough to register that.

Alongside the fact the stranger is _definitely _eyeing him up.

“Hello,” he lip-reads rather than hears the other man say to him. Part of him might be soaking the implicit want to find someone to write over the so-called scars Julian’s etched onto the surface of his heart, but no one makes the music fade into the background like his former best friend did. And as much as he’d hate to admit it, definitely still would.

“Hi,” he gets out, just quickly enough to prevent shit from getting awkward. Instinct is screaming at him to bolt, grab Sophia and wrestle Mitch and Sam off one another, but he can’t make himself. He’s living for the idiocy of intoxication. “Want to dance?”

Words are lost in the miles of space that doesn’t exist separating them. He thinks the man might introduce himself as Luca, answers him with a fake name and hopes the even more drunk man won’t envision him when the alcohol wears off the following morning. It’s reckless, with every inch Luca’s hand trails along the curve of his back he knows he should be sprinting to find his friends, but it doesn’t matter anymore.

Everyone else has been reckless with his emotions before. It shouldn’t matter if he is too.

“Are you here with anyone else?” He hears himself ask. Luca shakes his head.

“Just me tonight,” he winks, “I couldn’t leave my friends alone in the firepit that is this place if I found someone to sneak off with. And judging by the look of you, I wouldn’t mind. How tall even are you?”

“Bordering six foot five,” he answers lowly. Even so, a girl dancing with her friends overhears it, turns to him and he’s sure he sees her visually drool in front of him. He prays she doesn’t recognise him.

“Very nice,” Luca drawls. His hand’s still burning through the material of Kai’s shirt, silently engraving the marks of Kai’s night into his skin. It’s a horrible sensation that drink mixes into thinking is enjoyable.

“I just want to be wanted,” he blurts out, almost breaking from this man’s grip in humiliation. He’s chatting fluent shit, almost petrified of the way Luca’s eyes darken with something like arousal, deeper at every single word that Kai will never reclaim, won’t even remember to attempt.

“Well, I’m definitely willing,” Kai feels himself shuffling towards night, notices a door behind Luca’s head which the man is leading him towards.

It’s empty out there in the night, when Luca pulls him towards a deserted alley, the only noise is the residue thumping from the nightclub and the mirroring thud of Kai’s heart. Luca might not even be breathing, or there might be too much blood in Kai’s system, flooding to his head and to his dick and nowhere in between. 

“You seem so lovely, so cute, just a perfect fucking sub for me,” Luca whispers when he commandeers Kai against the brick wall, sliding his hands over his body. “I’m going to make sure you remember what happened, even though you’re drunk as hell, if you want me to.”

“I do,” Kai says, throwing his head back as Luca unclips his belt. The man’s fingers run underneath his shirt, trickling over his belly, and Kai wants to feel flames, be set alight like he always did with Julian, but it isn’t there. It’s nice to be touched after not having Julian for over a month, but now his mind is glorifying the way his ex-best friend moved and it’s a treacherous thought process to have. It could fall dangerously so quickly, trap him in that love he only recently admitted, bind him to his betrayer for so long.

Luca begins to paper over the cracks, right until his lube-wet finger teases Kai’s entrance. 

“S-Stop!” He cries out, “please, stop, no, I can’t do this.”

“Are you okay?” Luca says, but Kai can’t tell where his hands are. He’d fallen into a rush that wasn’t triggered by endorphin, can’t sense the bitter aftertaste of panic, his heart is still pounding but there’s no life-or-death malice in it. It’s weird, fresh and new, and for some reason the only thing ringing in his head is the way Julian would say his name.

_Fuck_, how he misses that. The soft gasp when he’d fuck Kai, or the groan accompanied by an eyeroll when Kai would beat him in Fortnite, all weighted by that tone Kai never heard used for anyone else.

“Yeah, I just-- not anal sex. I’ll suck you off, if you want me to,” he suggests, just to stop Luca staring at him like he’s a piece of meat.

“Okay,” Luca says, smiling when Kai sinks to his knees, unaware of the intense mental rehearsal Kai subjects himself to. The other man is hard by the time Kai pulls his jeans down to his ankles, gasps out appreciatively when Kai curls a hand around the length of his cock to stroke it. “God, just like that.”

Kai presses a nervous kiss to the other man’s thighs, smiling softly when he hears Luca groan. He does it again, almost bites a mark into his skin before his inhibitions and who he is briefly return to him. His thumb runs over the wet remains of pre-come on Luca’s slit. He relishes in the moan he gets when he licks it off, tiny, gentle strokes of his tongue before sliding his mouth onto the stranger’s shaft.

He remembers the way Julian used to roll his mouth over the vein, does it in time with pouring hot, wet breathes to ripple over the nerve endings, preening slightly at the choked-off strain of compliments Luca unleashes. The man is thrusting into Kai’s mouth, imposing his dominance in a way that bares a strange resemblance to Julian--- Kai’s not sure what prompts him to choke violently, his thoughts or the aggression of Luca’s movements.

The music’s thumping gets slightly louder just as he starts to move his head in rhythm with Luca’s thrusts, concentration spiked too high to understand the implications of the environmental change. The other man must have a better grip on reality, even from where his hand has laced and is gently pulling at Kai’s curls (they were already fuzzy, mussed with the nightclub’s humidity before he stepped outside, no one will notice anything) he can detach from him.

“Someone’s coming,” he says quickly, pulling his jeans up before Kai can even get off his knees.

In the distance, over the music, someone yells “LUCA!” There isn’t time for Kai to voice his confusion, Luca mumbling something like “they don’t know I’m into men, don’t tell anyone, please,” before he’s gone, and Kai’s left in the dark. Luca’s friends are heckling him for getting laid, but Kai still waits until their voices are long gone before he dares head back to the club.

Everyone’s attentions are pinpointed on a noisy altercation on the opposite side of the dancefloor, so no one notices him sneak back in through the back door. He’s counting his blessings, before he hears a girl yell and his skin prickles in fear. He shoves through the crowd, ignoring the curses people aim in his direction, until he bursts through and sees Sophia, flanked by Mitch and Sam, with a slash in his skirt that definitely wasn’t there when they arrived, and a very drunk group of men still drawling about all the things they want to do to him.

“I have a boyfriend,” Sophia keeps saying over the dissuasion the men are aiming at her. One of them makes a comment about how shit he must have been if he isn’t there to defend her, that just about sparks Kai into action, sauntering drunkenly towards the circle.

He sees a flash of recognition in the men’s eyes.

“She’s my girlfriend,” he says, voice wobbling when he watches the fixations of everyone in the club training themselves on him. “You leave her the fuck alone. Don’t make me punch you. I know you know who I am.”

“You play for fucking Leverkusen,” one of the group, someone Kai didn’t even notice before, pipes up. “Even Julian Brandt left them for better, and he can’t even start a game for the fucking national team.”

He mentally thanks Sophia for not breaking, not even glancing at him when _his _name echoes around the club. The DJ is still playing music, but it’s futile. The moment Kai stepped up, the entire nightclub fell into stunned silence.

Anger swirls in his mind as he glares the group down, Mitch coming to stand by his side. He thinks he can hear Sam usher Sophia out of the door as the attention on them marginally starts to dispel, but it isn’t until he turns to look at his teammate does he realise the extent of Mitch’s rage, stiffened stance and glare.

“Mitch, please,” he whispers, thoughts of Luca and what happened mere minutes ago still on his mind, “we can’t do this anymore. Not with the fame being a footballer has.”

“Maybe for you,” Mitch whispers back, before raising his voice to bring in Sophia’s assailants. “Back the fuck off now, or I am going to punch you. I’m not as famous as he is. I don’t care what would happen. Fuck off and leave him and his girlfriend alone.”

“She’s already gone,” one of them says, “he isn’t doing well at staying with her.”

“Let’s just go,” Mitch says suddenly, half-pulling Kai out of the door and into the suddenly scorching night heat. Sophia and Sam are waiting, Mitch’s drunk boyfriend lolling all over the backseat as she silently starts up the car.

No one says a word the whole way back, and no one mentions it until they’re all squashed over the sofas of Kai’s living room, tuned into the Super Cup, watching as the cameras roll over the terraces of Julian’s new home.

Kai has no idea why, but he somehow manages to convince himself that Julian won’t be there. Logic is thrown in favour of hope, avoidance of his former best friend sitting swamped in black and yellow, right to the point where he’s almost smiling right until the camera spans across the bench and there he is, all vivid blonde hair and dimples.

“There’s the snake,” he says without thinking, but he doesn’t regret the remark the second it passes his lips. Mitch and Sam might be looking at his incredulously, but he can’t bring himself to give a shit. He’s right, after all. “What? He left us without even saying anything.”

Mitch bites his lip. It’s pointless, Kai knows what his friend has on the tip of his tongue, but he doesn’t push the matter because the show has turned back to the pundits who are singing Reus and Sancho’s praises and the moment is over. Mitch had cooked them all dinner, which had taken longer than expected (Kai suspects the reason goes by the name of Sam), but now they’re all convened and Kai’s anger at Julian is beginning to re-rear its ugly head. The match starts in under five minutes, but there’s no way Kai can sit to watch it with the agitation twitching in his muscles.

“Who’s going to win today?” Sophia asks loudly, probably sensing the growing awkwardness. 

“Dortmund,” Sam smiles, “two-nil.”

“A good prediction,” Mitch says, “but I think Bayern are going to get one. Kai?”

“Well, Brandt isn’t playing, and we already know Dortmund are better without him,” Kai says, not caring for the defensive comment already hanging on Mitch’s tongue, “so I’ll back them too. Sophia?”

His friend takes a little longer to respond, not even bothering to mask her dubious stares at him before she mutters that she’d been backing Bayern all day. There isn’t time for anything else to be said, because the teams are lining up on the field of Dortmund’s stadium and the national anthem is blasting out. If it wasn’t for the noise, of the city, of the TV, of Mitch and Sam’s _dreadful _rendition, maybe Kai would be able to hear it from Julian’s new city an hour’s drive away.

The concept makes the pain multiply tenfold, because he’s suffering all this pain and Julian isn’t even that far away.

Cheers erupting from the screen and his friends rip through his recollection. He tries to focus in on the game, forces his eyes to track the ball dotting around the field, but he can’t ignore the continuous tug of his eyes to the bench on the bottom of the screen, in the knowledge, in _spite _of the knowledge, of who is sitting there, instead of resting his head gently on Kai’s shoulder, watching it like they did every year.

The ball trickles out of play and the cameras use the opportunity to cut to the benches. They go to the Bayern bench first, remarking on the inclusion of a couple of developing players, and Kai just about has enough time to hope that Serge has got around to taking the throw-in when the feed cuts to Dortmund.

Julian and Thorgan Hazard’s faces, embellished on the screen, his former best friend blinking with a little smile on his face. It’s nothing special, nothing that should plant a stake through Kai’s heart with the merciless malevolence it does, yet when the commentators start talking about the two of them, he swears loudly and places his hands over his ears.

“---Brandt will be a fantastic addition,” the commentator finishes when Kai finally removes his hands in lieu of submerging himself in the match. 

“No, he won’t.” Spite drips from his tone. “He’ll be shit for them, thrown out in January to the third tier and Leverkusen will laugh all the way to the bank from our position at the top of the Bundesliga.”

No one challenges him, probably for their own enjoyment of the match, but depravation in Kai’s mind plants a seed of hope, wonder that maybe he’s _fucking right, and they all agree with him_.

It’s goalless when the halftime whistle rings out, Sophia mumbling something about heading to the corner shop for snacks during the break. It’s very quiet. Sam looks like he’s trying to kiss Mitch out of saying something inflammatory.

For the briefest moment, Kai wants him to voice it. Wants them to come to blows, wants to shove the darkness of his brain telling him he’s not over Julian’s transfer out of his way, and then start afresh. He wishes Mitch would just fucking understand that.

Sense isn’t his ally, deserting him when he’s never needed it more. Hatred’s all that’s left, the bitter residue of whatever coursed through him the mornings when he’d wake before Julian, use the time to sneak the stolen glances with his crush blissfully unaware, those sensations of short, sharp spikes of affection that needled his heart. He’d take all the pain back in an instant for another morning like that, when his love hasn’t malformed into an empty shell of desertion yet.

If it was in the same timeline, he’d even tell himself to run.

Hindsight serves to torture him; the present is a never-ending dull ache of hurt and exhaustion from pretending he’s okay whenever he’s not left alone to contemplate it. The future bubbles away ahead, Kai oblivious to its curses and joys, the only certainty that Julian’s role is diminished, something Kai couldn’t imagine not three months ago.

Sophia bustles through the door with her arms full of sweets that Mitch, Sam and Kai should definitely not get so excited at. The two of them grab one of the packets and begin to feed each other, diction sickening as Sophia rolls her eyes fondly in their direction.

“Do you think it’ll go to penalties?” He asks her, mainly to drown out his friends’ antics and the rising want to act that idiotic with Julian.

“Nope, I’m still holding out for that Bayern victory.”

He turns and smirks at her the second Alcacer scores, laughing when she aims a slap at the side of his head. It’s all Dortmund from then on really, defending the Bavarian’s attacks and when Sancho takes his clinical shot, it’s all over.

“They only won because Brandt didn’t play,” Kai says, so quietly he isn’t sure if Mitch actually heard it, as the team dressed in yellow get up onto the podium. “Look at him,” he says louder, when Julian starts jumping with his arms around Hitz and Bruun-Larsen, “celebrating like he actually did something to help the team instead of sitting, injured, on the bench.”

“Hey!” Mitch says, voice raised, “stop chatting all this shit, Kai. Julian’s part of that team, he deserves to celebrate it along with them. It wasn’t like they were playing us. He isn’t being disrespectful.”

“I beg to fucking differ,” Kai responds, already feeling his mind drift towards chewing the fat of the saga of his former best friend’s transfer. 

“Yes, we know,” Sam cuts in, “you’re bitter that he didn’t tell you he was leaving. We fucking know that now, Kai, because you haven’t shut up about it at all! Did it ever occur to you that we berated him for not doing so when you ran off to god-knows-where when we were in Barcelona? That we tried to look out for you and how you were feeling?”

Trickles of remorse that remind him of being a child on the receiving end of a scolding infiltrate his mind, but he rubs them off with a shake of his head.

“I appreciate that, Sam, I really do. But I really hate him, and I want you all to know that.”

Kai would have to be fucking blind to miss the glance Mitch and Sam share, but neither of them question it. The older one just sighs and says something about them still being friends with him so to tone down the blatancy of his insults. If his promise is superficial, none of them have to know, not yet anyway.

His friends leave under the greyest of clouds, Kai certain but apathetic to the bitchy comments the two of them are definitely going to be making about him in between whatever fucking sex they’re going to be having over at Mitch’s. Sophia looks desperate to say something, something she knows he won’t want to hear, so he kisses her cheek and sees her out before she can garner the courage.

His flat reverts to that looming, encompassing feeling of being far too big and quiet without its bustle. Most nights, after training, Julian would be there for hours, or he’d be flopped on the sofa at Julian’s house, eating snacks and lobbying friendly fire with Jannis while Julian fluttered about. Then they’d take each other to bed, fuck and more often than not, fall asleep next to each other like it was a completely normal thing for best friends to do.

Aches of missing the routine shatter him more than he expects, even when he’s been playing the thought train on loop since Julian left, essentially. That and the arousal he can’t fight off, that quick wanks in the shower don’t satiate, because it isn’t Julian’s hand.

His hand doesn’t equate to the rough callouses of his ex-best friend, no matter how intoned he is to what he likes. It doesn’t feel like relief when he comes.

Cold water droplets run over his eyes when he raises his head back from the basin. His lungs strain, maybe he’s dunked his head under for way longer than they could healthily deal with, but who cares? He’s alive and his blood is flowing, putting himself through unnecessary turmoil isn’t going to kill him, because if it was going to, surely it would have taken him by now.

Curses ring out through his bedroom as he stubs his toe on the corner of his bedframe, zombified walking subjecting him to its daze. It does, however, mean he falls asleep almost the instant his head slaps against the pillow.

His body paralysed with the harrowing effects of dream-inception, watching the movie of himself dreaming. The meta-dream’s content is blurred, but he can see Julian’s eyes flickering brightly and the gentle sounds of his former best friend’s moans that still reverberate around his mind when his hand trails down his naked skin to his cock, he can hear himself moan Julian’s name and the disparity is extremely jarring. His skin prickles with want, but he doesn’t know which Kai is suffering that fate.

“J-Jule,” he gasps out, “p-please.”

Comprehending whatever dream-Julian responds with is impossible, however gauging the helpless whine of “touch me,” it must be a question. He watches, listens to himself fall apart in Julian’s hand, can almost feel Julian like he’s leant over him, touching him with painful familiarity in the best way to get Kai ready without bringing him anywhere close to the edge. His moans are unfiltered, unabashed, more revealing than even their most passionate night in Ibiza, and it makes his unconscious state yearn for what he never had with a ridiculous intensity.

There’s a judder and the clarity of the dream increases, Julian’s eyes still blue against the blackness, but there isn’t the odd sense of playing observer to another dream. It feels like it’s him, Julian laying next to him with arousal laced in his eyes.

“Did you enjoy that?” The older one says, voice low and hot. 

“Enjoy what?” He says. Julian’s eyes flicker down to Kai’s joggers, and that’s when he sees the distinct wet patch staining the material. His gaze is weighed with embarrassment when he brings his eyes up to meet the other man’s.

“You were moaning my name,” Julian admits, so deep and so quiet Kai almost misses it. “I’ve been lying here trying not to touch myself while I watched you.”

“Shit,” Kai says, something in his mind sprinting to catch up with the insanity of the situation. “Jule, I’m sorry--- wait, why are you here? Why aren’t you in your bed?”

“It’s creepy, I know,” Julian’s smirk melts to bashful for the slightest moment, the sight causing Kai’s heart to skip a little with the heaviest douse of affection. “But when I’m so hard I’m going to die if you don’t touch me in the next minute, there wasn’t much I could do. Of course, I’m gonna make stupid decisions,” his best friend leans forwards, breath ghosting over the curve of Kai’s lips, “there’s no blood in my brain.”

_‘It’s all in my dick,’ _Kai finishes wordlessly as Julian leans up to press his lips against Kai’s. It’s sweet, gentle, doesn’t belie the underlying thrum of desperate desire that’s plaguing both of them. Julian’s hands have found their way to Kai’s neck, thumb caressing the soft skin with a fondness that is basically the romantic culmination of fantasy and the thrill of spending his time with Julian fucking Brandt. It’s a miracle he’s made it this far. It’s a miracle Julian cracked first.

“Can I?” Julian mumbles, half-shyly, half with an eroticism to his tone that basically renders Kai entirely at his mercy. He might have needed to finish his sentence because Kai’s mind is shot already, but the disparity between Julian’s cold fingers and the hot skin of Kai’s lower stomach is disconcerting enough to fill the space where his mind hasn’t quite comprehended everything yet.

Kai whispers something like “please,” that flashes him back to the meta-dream, disbelief that this is real, and Julian is actually fiddling with the waistband of his still-damp underwear. There’s a contortion on the older man’s face that Kai leans down to kiss off, still feeling as if it’s forbidden.

Their slide of lips is messy, passionate, the exact surge of reassurance that propels Julian to shove Kai’s underwear down and not be left with a growing sense of humiliation. Kai’s hands run along the skin of Julian’s stomach, pressing down against the definition he’s tried so hard not to stare at during showers at training, barely moving to lift the faded blue shirt Julian wears to bed.

His eyes scan the curves of the other man’s body from where he’s tensed above him, watches the way Julian kicks his underwear down his legs and off. Sweat has mussed his best friend’s hair, it’s sticking to his forehead in its frizzy mess, the kind that allows Kai to get away with a little bit of pulling. Julian leans back and _fucking preens_, _shit_, Kai wasn’t expecting him to do that and certainly not for him to like it _so damn much_.

Questions flicker between the two of them when they finally drag their gazes from each other’s bodies. All it takes is for the slightest nod of Kai’s head before Julian’s fingernails are scratching their ownership into his skin, taking the pleased groan Kai can’t, and doesn’t want to, choke back for what it’s worth. He takes his revenge with a glance of his lips over Julian’s neck, sucking viciously to rise the blood to bruise, smirking into his best friend’s delicious skin in response to the gorgeous snarling sound Julian releases at the action.

Julian collapses over him, lining them up and stilling so violently Kai’s worried he’s passed out. He’s about to yell when Julian lifts his head to smile (with something in its expression Kai _could_ describe as teasing menace, but it doesn’t quantify it correctly) and rolls his hips against Kai’s erection.

Mutely, Kai begins to feel its fire burn him. It’s scalding, sensuous, created by the two of them and only extinguishable once they deal with what they’re both experiencing. Even so, Julian’s still got the upper hand with his mocking thrusts, so he reciprocates and slides a hand along the curve of the older man’s ass, merely raising his eyebrows when Julian eyes him.

“Got a problem?” He teases, like he _doesn’t_. It’s an obvious lie, especially when they’re lined up against one another, dicks starting to slide together in a beautiful mess of friction. However, he can’t deny it’s fun to deceive like that, gorgeous to watch Julian struggle to find words for once in his life, elicits a bubbling pulse of excitement on top of every other fucking sensation because Julian might _punish _him.

(The thought is shocking, because he’d never considered it before. The more he does, the more the thought resides with him, the idea of Julian tying him down or--- _shit_, no, he can’t come yet.)

“If you don’t shut up and let me do this---,” Julian croaks out, “--- you wouldn’t want to know what I would do.”

“What would that be?” Kai says. His courage hasn’t abandoned him yet, still holding out with a reckless stubbornness that forces him to be coherent when his mind is drifting towards thoughts of Julian fucking him until the sun has long risen over whatever city’s behind the curtain.

Kai doesn’t know nor care. His entire world is Julian lying above him.

“Just let me---,” Julian whispers, hand trailing back down to Kai’s dick and curling itself along the shaft. His strokes are gentle, fleeting, definitely designed as silent vengeance for Kai’s comments, and exactly as Kai suspected, he pulls off when Kai’s hips buck into his touch subconsciously. “No, no,” he shushes, voice sing-song and torture to listen to, “want to fuck you. Want to make you feel like you did when you were dreaming.”

All the air that surged into his cheeky comments rushes out of his body. He’s voluntarily stranded on the bed, couldn’t move even if he wanted to, with heat radiating from Julian’s skin and rippling over his trembling form with almost a sense of victory.

“Can I?” Julian speaks again, tone wavering slightly. His touch on Kai has grown even lighter, from glancing to barely-there, its loss impacting Kai so much it’s audible in the strain of his voice as he begs the older man.

Julian’s hands trace over the planes of his body with an aura of exploration. Reality has no place here, the truth that his former best friend knows exactly how to get Kai off with a purposefulness the younger one loathes isn’t relevant in this hazy perception. It’s Julian, all his beauty and wonder, flickering over Kai’s body with gaze and touch in ways Kai would never have dared hope for in the alternate setting’s yesterday.

Kai can see the effort Julian’s putting in to hold himself over his body, runs a hand along the smooth skin on the small of the older man’s back to ease him down next to Kai. There’s not a whisper of space between them, Kai not willing to remove the contact with Julian’s skin now he’s finally allowed it, Julian evidently craving the warm, messy heat their intertwined bodies can’t create alone. It’s solidly grounding, romantic to a sense that Kai’s never experienced before, has never imagined himself experiencing than anyone but his best friend, on nights when the alcohol would flow as he sat alone in his apartment, thinking about everything that was _fucking wrong with him._

Dreams eradicate the awkward bits that Kai never wanted to revisit when he got himself off in the showers to the memory of Julian fucking him, so there’s none of the slightly embarrassing, stiff, obvious foreplay. Instead, there’s just kissing, endless touching that desperate hands were so torturously prohibited of, silent promises of words that can’t be uttered right then, saved for later when all this is over and Julian’s lying alongside him.

Kai doesn’t know which bit he’s looking forward to the most. Relish seems like the most fated emotion.

Julian’s caught breaths echo through him like a thrum.

It’s so vivid, his best friend moving around him, pressing their lips together until Kai’s lungs are about to burst out of chest with oxygen depletion, before Julian taunts Kai’s heart into threatening the same thing.

The precise second the tip of Julian’s dick brushes against Kai’s entrance, Kai feels like he might actually die. He’s caught in the soft glare of Julian’s eyes, pinning him down and enabling his doubts to float off in the rustling winds that have suddenly appeared in his peripheral. His hand finds the other man’s, laces their fingers together in the loudest show of silent courage they can muster, right as Julian pushes in.

Sound begins to stretch at that moment, disjointing and disappointing Kai for its theft of Julian’s beautiful moan, but the feeling isn’t diminished. Julian thrusts in slowly, tracing something on the curve of Kai’s wrist with his thumb that has fallen loose from their handhold. Kai can’t decipher it, too lost in the sensations of _affection _that Julian somehow conveys in the way he is slowly taking Kai completely apart, however he thinks it’s something like ‘it’s okay. I love you.’

If it’s not, telling himself it is does enough to flutter his heart.

Julian begins to move faster, Kai’s views of the event becoming disillusioned and superficial, confusion beginning to poison his simple happiness. Time skips, Julian’s hand is on his dick, stroking him with a touch that makes Kai practically yearn to set himself alight to eat up the pain of the sensations. His free hand, once running along the stark curve of Julian’s collarbone, has moved down to the older man’s thighs, thumb running across the underside and sending goose bumps prickling over Kai’s skin as Julian shivers. 

The older man slumps over him, muscles giving up on him as he drowns in the waves of orgasm, hips stuttering helplessly in a way that makes it excruciatingly hard for Kai not to come, because he wants to enjoy this, soak in the face Julian makes when he comes and not have to be embarrassed if he’s caught staring.

Julian breaks their interlocked hands, moving to run his hand through the knots in Kai’s hair as he finally regains the strength to stroke Kai faster.

“You’re so beautiful,” the older man gasps out, sounding way too aroused for someone in the throes of delicious orgasm under a minute previously, “I’m so in love with you.”

Julian’s words elicit the warning fire in the depths of Kai’s belly, burning through him with relentless venom. He can still feel Julian, post-coital and gentle inside of him, falls back against the pillow under the weight of his own thoughts and lets Julian stroke him into oblivion, coming with the older man’s name on his lips.

Something he thinks is a muffled sensation of relief runs through him, but it’s muted, uncomfortable, rather than relaxing. His dick feels wet, cramped, disgusting him as he’s dragged out of the throes of sleep and blinks hard against the hazy morning light. His phone says there’s only five minutes before his alarm is set to blare, so he begins to fall back against the pillows when he catches sight of a large wet patch on his underwear.

Humiliation surges through him, suppressing any elements of drowsiness attempting to send him back to sleep. He’d be lying if he said he couldn’t feel the remains Julian’s fingers creeping over him prickling his skin, still sees the flicker of his former best friend’s body every time he fucking blinks, there’s no questioning how this happened, but _fuck _it’s maybe the worst, most embarrassing, feeling he’s ever had. He hasn’t woken up wet since he was fourteen, and now he’s doing it over the man he’s supposed to hate.

He chucks the incriminating evidence straight into the washing machine, ignoring the pile of dirty laundry on his chair he’s been meaning to wash for about a week. Skin on fire, face tainted a permanent red, sweat piercing his collarbone as he enters the dressing room a couple of hours later, forty minutes early, expecting to be alone. He isn’t expecting to find Lotta fussing around, conducting an interview with Lars about the importance of balancing the Champions League schedule or some captaincy-related shit, isn’t expecting the weirdly knowing looks she keeps shooting at him when they take a break from filming.

No one notices if his penalties are a bit more aggressive than normal, if only to knock the humiliation right out of his body.

• • • • • • 

Indifference encompasses him for the next couple of days. He avoid social media almost entirely, spending his evenings playing Fortnite with Mitch and Sam, ignoring Sophia’s whines that he needs to clean his flat and whatever other domestic shit she feels it would be healthy for him to actually do, but it’s like all his motivation drains out of him the second he hears the click of his front door shutting behind him.

He finally gets tired of his social media abstinence the night before the first Bundesliga game, posting some generic comment about giving his best for the season that absolutely does not reflect the apathetic character he has become. He also doesn’t understand why he’s so torn about playing a league match without Julian alongside him, he’s done it before, but he always had his best friend watching him. Now, he’s going to be playing his own game, donning a new shirt and not paying any attention to what Kai is doing back at his former club.

His thumb clicks through the Instagram stories absent-mindedly, the sense of déjà vu that drenches him instantly intensified by the images he sees when he scrolls to Julian’s. His finger presses down, freezing the image as his eyes scan it, emotionless armour finally shattering on the ground when he fixates on Julian’s smile, the arms so casually thrown over Sancho and Bruun-Larsen’s shoulders. He can almost hear the older man’s laughter, the careless banter he threw at all hours of the day.

Staring at it, in hindsight, might be where it really all goes wrong for him.

There’s no dramatics, no bang of his phone clattering against the wall in a fit of explosive, cinematic rage, he’s measured and calm as he places it on the coffee table and lies back against the sofa. No matter how he tries to detract his mind, he’s dragged back to the night before the opening game the previous year, when Julian sucked his dick and then they watched the opening match, casual jokes thrown between the two of them. It couldn’t be more different a year later, and the worst part is Kai never saw it coming.

The times Kai was sick, Julian would come around with something he’d cooked (no matter how much he hated it, his former best friend could cook a few decent meals) and wouldn’t leave until Kai passed out with ill-exhaustion. 

It wasn’t just the sex, Kai always knew that, there was some deep underlying friendship his talent for football had always robbed him of. His so-called school ‘friends’ only ever liked him for the potential he’d become famous, he’s lost count of the number of clamouring messages for shirts and hook-ups with the girls “Kai must attract every single day.” Julian never did that, none of his teammates did, they all got it, but no one got _him_ quite like Julian did.

Then there were the hugs, the fucking fizzy, warm feeling that started to creep into his veins whenever Julian would take him into his arms, how he would force that out of his thoughts because its consequences are far too dangerous to even consider venturing. He knows now that it was the laborious, slow burn falling for him, but back then it felt like a thrill of actually having a sincere best friend.

Cascades of hurt burn into cascades of betrayal, not for the first time. He suddenly hates himself for his naivety, wonders if Lars, Sven, Mitch, Sam, Sophia spend their evenings rolling their eyes and muttering how he got what was coming to him for taking Julian’s friendship for granted. He should’ve remembered how Julian wouldn’t want to stay with him. No one else had, the moment he didn’t respond to their begs, they ditched him. He was an idiot for thinking Julian would be any different.

Is this what heartbreak feels like? His motionless form, paralysed as pain crashes over him relentless, the iceberg balanced on his chest crushing down over his lungs, the anguish of his failure to get the fuck over Julian multiplying and spearing him relentlessly. He misses him, he _really fucking misses him_, he can’t lie to himself that he’s okay, but he goddamn well can lie to everyone else.

If anyone aside from Sophia dared question, he’d deflect their suspicions without batting an eyelash. Any, from whether or not Kai intended to hurt him with the brutal bombshell of his final text to the older man, to this helpless missing of him, and especially the whole being-in-love-with-him thing he was way too idiotic to not pick up on when Julian was here.

That’s the worst thing of all, because what if Julian _did_? What if he caught on that Kai was catching feelings, wanted to run away before Kai let himself be overcome with emotions and allow that to suffocate him? Agony starts to bubble in his blood, desire to know creeping to the unavoidable forefront of his mind, but he can’t. He burnt that bridge, leaving nothing but charred remnants.

It’s a fire that cannot be put out. It still smoulders deep, blackening the hazardous edges of his heart. It’s made worse, oxidised, by the reminder that Julian’s moving on, he’s found new friends that won’t treat him as selfishly as Kai did, won’t force him out of his home with their inability to control themselves.

Somehow, he manages to fall asleep and almost sleeps right through his alarm. He’s forced himself not to dream since the other night, the memories of which still ices his blood when Julian’s eyes, dripping in arousal, trickle back into his thoughts. Even with all the sleep, he can’t feel rested, not with the dead weight still pushing against his chest. It doesn’t relax when he stands, presses against him like he’s constantly running into a brick wall shoving him back into the ropes of his affection for Julian. He can work around it, but its presence isn’t relinquishing.

The match isn’t scheduled to start until half two, but he has to be at the training ground for ten. He turns up ten minutes early, and already ninety percent of the team are flittering around. There are the old timers, the veterans, joking and laughing loudly, the newcomers, Sinkgraven looking particularly sick, nervous. There’s the media staff, the internet-famous admin of the English Twitter account making Lars and Sven pose together, and Lotta, talking in low, earnest tones to Jonathan. Kai still doesn’t know where he can place her from.

Normally, the run up to a match can seem excruciating, the child in him getting so excited, time begins to drag, however today, it’s not. His mind hasn’t even comprehended that it’s time to open their season before they’re in the dressing room in the bowels of the stadium, staring up at the ‘Demirbay’ printed over the top of the ten. If he squints, he thinks he can still see the outline of ‘Brandt.’

Eighty miles away, there’s a husky, black dressing room underneath the Westfalenstadion where ‘Brandt’ is now written.

“Havertz! Fucking listen to me!” Bosz yells, shaking Kai from his trance, “we are a team, but don’t forget that most of those fans love you more than everyone else! I can’t have this fucking lack of focus from you. He’s gone! I know you’re still staring, wanting him back, but he plays for the enemy now! Let him go!”

Bosz’s evisceration ignites a rage Kai’s never experienced. Even Lars looks annoyed, verging on the cusp of challenging their coach. All of them know that isn’t fair, and that’s worrying, because what if they fucking knew too?

_What if Julian told them when Kai missed training once? What if they’ve spent years laughing at him secretly, while Kai stared longingly at the way Julian smiled?_

He has to trust them. There’s no alternative, not when they’re crowding through the door to go and line up for the match and Bosz is mouthing an apology to him over Lukas’ head. The announcer is yelling his name as he arrives in the tunnel, listens to the crowd yell “HAVERTZ!” with such an intensity he feels it in his bones. Paderborn are right next to them, chattering intensely about their return to the Bundesliga, before falling silent.

Lars starts to walk, and this is it. Kai can feel the noise rise up around him, smiles to himself as the little girl who’s his mascot clutches his hand nervously. He remembers how massive this must seem, even Alemannia’s stadium when he was her age and still kicking a ball around the backstreets of Mariadorf was gigantic, let alone the cacophony of the BayArena.

She grins up at him when he leans down, whispering an instruction to wave. Then she’s gone, Lars is strolling over to the Paderborn captain, the stands are growing tense, and Kai has to feign that he’s ready.

Waiting for the referee to blow his whistle seems like an eon. It condemns him that his final thought before the game commences is “where is Julian?” Answers flit through his head when they get a break from the intensity after Leon scores, the arena exploding around him, the team huddling, Kai missing the familiar feeling of Julian’s hand on his waist.

_No. He’s gone._

Paderborn equalise and it sparks a want in Kai. He can see the insane number of fans bedecked in his shirt. Somewhere, high in the stands, Sophia’s there too. Lotta. All the other people in his life.

When he scores his goal, it’s almost like he knows he doesn’t need Julian, if only for those ninety minutes. His eyes drift to the blindingly blue sky stretching out above the stadium, cloudless and perfect, tainted by the vicious, silent curses he directs at it, hoping that, while no one can hear him, drowned out by the revisited screaming of his name, Julian might be able to.

The game is fraught, Paderborn sticking closely to their game plan, and they scramble to a 2-2 draw as they’re summoned back into the dressing room, opposition smiling, them frustrated. He wants more. He wants the win. He doesn’t want to be left thinking that he can’t make it without the versatility his former best friend brought to the team.

Bosz somehow manages to outdo the levels of stress his exhibited pre-match during his half-time talk, laying into their almost shambolic defending in the first twenty minutes. Sometimes he hits nerves with his individual critique, but he refrains from that (Kai wonders if the distaste that poisoned the locker room after the Julian references caused it), opting to change their formation and attacking stances. His spiel is timed perfectly, ending right as the referees summon them back out onto the field for the second forty-five minutes.

Exasperation at their own inability to perform, despite all the preparation, is just beginning to set in, eat at their heels tauntingly when Kevin scores the winner. It isn’t their best, but they snatch the win, and it’s enough to allow Kai to believe they’re going to be okay. The new signings are brimming with fresh, diverse talent. If they all stayed, they’d only go stale anyway.

Lotta pulls him aside to interview him after he’s showered, asking him a few generic questions about the game, the fans, and his aspirations for the season. He smiles at her, tries to answer what she says to the best of his ability, but his brain is shot from his continuous restless nights and the strain of the match. His phone is buzzing in his pocket with the intensity it always did after a game where he’s scored, there’ll be a message from Joshua definitely, alongside all the scores from the other games.

He doesn’t remember setting it so Dortmund will push right to the top of his notification screen, but it does. 5-1 against Augsburg, and because he loves self-torture, his finger has clicked on it and is loading the game information. 

Weirdly, it takes a long time for his eyes to settle on the ‘Julian Brandt’ written on the bottom of the scorecard, his former best friend apparently having scored a late goal to confine Augsburg to their early-season depths. There’s the bitterness he’s come to expect from himself, but there’s also a sense of something like pride, a deep-lying part of him he’s repressed from himself out of pure hatred, that actually really wants Julian to succeed, because for all the hurt Kai’s been thrust under as a result of his decision, Julian was a damn good friend.

His moments of eerie self-reflection make him walk into a pole, right in front of some of the Bayer staff. 

“Yeah, um, hi,” he stammers awkwardly, sprinting away and down the shortcut he uses to get back home, almost grateful for the embarrassing interlude to rid his mind of Dortmund and everything that was unfolding over there. What he isn’t expecting, though, is a text from Jannis that coincides with him arriving back at his flat, congratulating him for his goal and notifying him that he’s coming back to Leverkusen for the evening for a photoshoot tomorrow.

**Kai: **come and visit! would be good to see you

**Jannis: **chill. i’ll be there in an hour. 

**Jannis: **i’ll supply the wine

Preparing the final parts of one of the meals his nutritionist laid out for him, his mind drifts to Jannis, and thus, Julian. He hasn’t seen Julian’s brother since the Ibiza trip that broke his heart in the most non-conventional way possible, a slow burn that numbed the pain like anaesthesia, its effect only hitting him when he broke free and watched just how far away from him Julian had slipped.

It seemed implausible that it could happen when Julian was fast asleep next to him in a too-small bed, Kai’s body braced firmly against sleep and agonisingly entuned to Julian. It’s the sort of shit romance novels embellish, gentle falling in love when the brain is tired, raw and real, inhibition vanished by those sensations. For Kai, it didn’t happen like that. It would never happen like that, being into men and being the person that he was.

For all the things he has, all the benefits of being a professional footballer with more money than he could ever need, part of him still wants that fictional whirlwind romance, and all of him, like he admitted to Sophia in paraphrased diction, wishes for Julian to be the other main character.

There was never any chance anyway, but if there was, Kai sent that train hurtling off a cliff without considering that he might regret it a minute later.

Incessant beeping of the oven disturbs his thoughts, and he busies himself waiting for Jannis to arrive. The evening is dusky calm, pink lighting dousing the streets outside, hot heat stuffy and oppressive. He ends up on his balcony, so lost in his thoughts he almost doesn’t hear the knocks on the door.

“Hey!” Jannis says, boundless energy never failing to surprise Kai every time he sees him. “Long time no see!”

“Yeah,” he answers, swallowing down the sudden lump in his throat. “Good to see you. I’ve got dinner cooking.”

“Good,” Jannis smiles, brandishing a bottle of wine from his backpack. “Nice goal today. I would’ve come to watch the game, but I was… you know, in Dortmund.”

“Of course,” Kai hates the way this conversation has _already _turned awkward, like Julian’s brother had expected him to get depressed at the mere mention of his former best friend’s name. How close that is to the truth Kai could never quantify, but the insinuation hurts more than he thought it would. “I heard he scored.”

“He did,” Jannis can’t hide the pride in his face, and Kai almost doesn’t want him to. He’s not so weak he can’t deal with Jannis showing brotherly affection, surely.

(The fact the answer to that question isn’t crystal clear is a sick realisation. Has he really morphed into one of those obsessive, jealous cunts he hates?)

“Tell him I said congratulations,” Kai says, unable to prevent his voice from sounding stale. There’s the desperate need to change the subject, so he invites Jannis further into his apartment and fakes amusement by pointlessly fiddling with the knobs on the oven. Jannis takes a couple of wine glasses out of the cabinet, filling them and passing one to Kai. It’s very mundane, yet artificial, a mutual agreement to ignore the elephant in the room because addressing it only serves to make things worse.

“How’s the photography career going?” He says eventually, only to sever the disconcerting awkwardness growing through the flat.

“Really good, I’ve got an agency now,” Jannis smiles, “Sophia’s asked me to take some photos of her tomorrow.”

“That’s your appointment?” Kai says, laughing. “She’s obsessed with having photos taken.”

“She’s very pretty, it’s allowed.”

“Don’t you dare try and get with my girlfriend!” Kai jokes. Jannis knows the truth, but Kai can’t help himself. It’s worth it just to hear Julian’s brother laugh at him, given their painful greeting. Even so, Kai isn’t satisfied with the agreement they silently contracted minutes ago, it rubs like a plaster on his skin where the wound has sealed, all he has to do is brace himself and rip it off.

The agony can be dealt with later.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts out, burning up when he sees the confused look Jannis shoots him. “I am genuinely happy for Julian. I just, and this is so stupid of me, but I don’t know how to deal with it when he’s mentioned. I need to learn, so I can get over---, stop being so angry at him all the time. Talk about him, _please_\---,” the oven interrupts him, signalling their meal is ready, but Kai’s glad, because he’s got no idea where he was trailing off to.

Jannis is silent, chewing his lip right until Kai places the plate down in front of him.

“I don’t know if you’d like what I told you, though.”

“Please, Jannis.” He hates himself for sounding like he’s begging, even more so for the fact it’s got to this point. “It’s only a month until the international break, and we might have to share a room when we go to Belfast. I can’t go on freaking out every time his name is even mentioned if I’m going to have to face him like that.”

“Yeah,” Jannis sighs, taking a few bites of dinner. Kai does too, but it tastes like sawdust. “The truth is, he’s doing brilliantly. He barely ever comes home immediately after training, he’s always at one of the lads’ houses, playing FIFA or whatever, or even just doing recovery together. He does miss Leverkusen though, he’s always texting someone from there, asking how you all are doing and such.”

Kai wants nothing more than to ask if Julian ever asks about him, but he’s not in his right to do that. Not after he cut contact so violently. It briefly occurs to him to hate Sophia for prompting him. It’s nothing compared to the lasting hate he inflicts on himself for listening. The worst part is how easy it would be to change it, and how the prospect strikes him with terror.

“Who does he talk to?” He says instead, which might be just as terrible a question, but it’s passed his lips and he can’t take it back (a bit like all those things he’s said about Julian, all those things he’s done to Julian that they’re going to curse him with spikes of remorse forever).

“I’ve seen him message Mitch the most,” Jannis answers, voice quiet, gaze pinpointed somewhere past Kai’s head. There’s a lump in Kai’s throat that a big gulp of wine does nothing to counteract, save for flow straight to his head and set a husky dent in the clarity of his vision. Mitch, who’s listened to so many of his complaints, staunchly sat there during Kai’s expletive tirades and almost fought a stranger in a village bar over the insults thrown at Kai and Sophia, is in frequent contact with the object of Kai’s rants and has _probably told him everything_. There was never anything said, no childish begging for Mitch to keep his comments secret, Kai took the naïve assumption that the oldest of the four of them would know how he was feeling because of Sam and act, as Kai would see it, accordingly.

He doesn’t know if he’s more embarrassed at his self-absorption, or whatever pressures he’s inadvertently shoved on Mitch’s already-loaded shoulders.

“I didn’t know about that---,” his voice is pitifully weak. Jannis nods, swallowing down whatever comment he was considering saying. “--- I’m glad he’s staying in contact. They,” he begins, before something in him relents and forces him to say the truth, “we all miss him.”

“He misses you all too.” There’s silence again, the two of them eating to dispel the obvious discomfiture. The younger one swallows violently, his want winning out against his inhibitions, “he misses you too. He’d kill me if he found out you knew, but I keep seeing him scrolling through the photos of the two of you and muttering something about wishing you’d text him.”

“I blocked him.”

He dissociates from the conversation, if only not to intake the unsurprised look of disappoint painted on Jannis’ face,

“I know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I understand why you did it. He does, too. He knew you were hurt, and the two of you definitely made it worse for yourselves with all that sex you had in Ibiza, but you can’t forget how close the two of you were. That isn’t something you should just give up on.”

“If I had a choice, I wouldn’t have given up on it,” Kai says, voice returning to him as he pushes his plate aside. “I want him back more than I can express, but it wouldn’t be healthy. Not at the moment. Not until I can stop acting like a fucking wounded puppy and my heart finally stops skipping a beat whenever I see his face, or my blood running cold when I hear his name.”

The look on Jannis’ face changes from shocked, to cunning, to inconspicuous in such a short period of time Kai would’ve missed it if he’d blinked. Then, the tiniest, devilish smirk appears on the younger one’s face,

“You’re so overdramatic, Kai,” Jannis laughs, “this is exactly why you and Julian are perfect for each other.”

For all the words in language, Kai could say _anything_, what comes out is, “oh.” He might as well have stayed silent, because Jannis checks his phone and is then downing his wine with a purposefulness that Kai envies, placing his glass on the table and standing up like he’s in a sudden rush to leave.

“Shit, Kai, I’ve got to go---,” he says, leading Kai towards his own front door, “something’s come up.”

“Are you going to be okay to drive? I mean, you did just---,”

“Don’t worry, it’s in walking distance.”

“Want me to walk you there?”

“No, um, thank you for the offer though. Good to see you, bro. I’ll have to smash you on Fortnite soon!” Jannis says, slapping Kai on the back before darting out of his flat. Kai’s mocking call about Jannis having the same misplaced faith as his older sibling follows him down the cerulean hallway, definitely pissing off all of Kai’s apartment sharers.

He half-considers what forced Jannis to rush off so unexpectedly, deems that a much more socially acceptable topic of thought. But he’s not subject to the constraints of society’s reins, hiding away in his flat is his only true escape from publicity, so he indulges himself into considering the other option, the one that only spells out danger and far too much overthinking. He ventures to the toxic cliff edge anyway.

“Julian and I… perfect for each other?” He mumbles to nobody. It’s the stuff of his fantasies, not the kind of golden nugget in a throwaway comment remarked offhandedly by Julian’s brother of all people. 

The problem with it coming from Jannis is the context is non-existent. Julian’s close with his younger brother, has been since Kai first met them when he was ten years old and Jannis’ respect for his older brother was instantaneously obvious, but he doesn’t know if Jannis would necessarily know if Julian was in love, let alone if he was in love with _Kai_. Or maybe it was a comment designed to whip Kai into a frenzy of wondering, because Julian’s told Jannis all about Kai’s blatant feelings for him and wanted sweet, painful revenge.

Kai bashes his head against the sofa cushions he doesn’t even remember collapsing down onto, and screams bloody murder.

• • • • • •

Despite the cutthroat comments, the intrusion of possibilities he’s only dared let himself think about when his hand is sliding against his dick in the shower, nothing changes. Mitch doesn’t rush up to him in the locker room begging him to unblock Julian because the Dortmund player wants to confess to him. Sam doesn’t text him with anything along the same vein. Julian continues to live his new life in the city that’s an hour away, the only hour on Earth that feels like a fucking lifetime.

On the journey to Düsseldorf, he sits next to Mitch, the two of them pairing up after their other halves left them for their new clubs. He tries talking to him, but the older one is texting someone avidly, light blocking Kai’s view so he can’t see the display name. All he hopes is it isn’t Sam’s nudes.

They beat Fortuna 3-1, so they’re in good spirits for the journey home, the social media team buzzing around the coach trying to catch family-friendly quotes about the game to post to the various language accounts. Kai even manages to forget about the dead weight of pain, shred himself the cloak that had seemingly made itself a home shrouding his shoulders, for the hour or so it takes them to travel back.

He approaches Mitch when they’re deposited back at the training ground and debriefed, but the older one shrugs him off, still staring at his phone, and gets in his car, driving away before Kai’s even moved.

“Schreck must be horny,” Jonathan, who Kai didn’t even notice before, jokes from beside him, much to the discontent of Lars. “Fuck off, Bender, he’s old enough for sex, leave him be. It’s when you find out the amount of sex Havertz gets that you’ll---,”

Jonathan’s cut off by the captain’s fist hitting his shoulder.

Kai shakes his head and starts to head towards his own car, mind already contemplating which of the meals his nutritionist has set out for him he’s going to eat tonight, trying and failing to tune out the hollering of his teammates, some grasping on to Jonathan’s sex accusation. 

In the minute it takes him to get to his car, he thinks he could make a week’s wages if he got a euro for every time Sophia’s name is mentioned. An ever-growing part of him wants to yell the truth out of the window, that all except from his first time with a girl from his biology Abitur class, because he was so fucking horny and she was pretty hot, and Luca, all of his experience is with their former fucking teammate. The only good part would be watching the shock set in on their faces.

His delusions of grandeur are sliced through by the revving of the car engine as he pulls away, into Leverkusen’s streets, the city he has come to associate with Julian. It’s given him everything, taken his dreams and created a reality out of them, threw in someone who turned his world on its head. The day he came out to Julian, he said it like he’d had a few crushes on guys, but no. Julian had come into his life, on that day in Berlin, Kai had watched him train from where he was supposed to be focusing on practice for the Under 17 Euros for the entire week. He tried not to think about how his heart sunk when Julian didn’t turn up to wave them off like most of the rest of the Olympic team.

He spent so much of that summer at home in Aachen, glued to the television screen whenever Germany played, his mother berated him for hours on end. Every time the camera would pan to the man who would tear his life into shreds mere months later, Kai’s heart would thump wildly, and he didn’t know why. He remembers the way Julian buried his head in Serge’s shoulder, trying not to express his disappointment to the public’s eagle eyes.

It was just admiration, that’s what he told himself until Julian stumbled in early on his first day back at training, and it deteriorated into the aching mess it is now.

He’s so out of sentience, he almost burns his dinner. And it’s when he’s sitting down to eat that does everything somehow manage to get even worse.

Mitch has posted something on his story, Kai’s internet connection meaning it takes an annoyingly long time for the post to load, and once it does, it almost seems like fate taunting him. It’s only a boomerang video, but that’s unmistakably Julian and Sam, controllers splayed on their laps while they converse.

There have been more times than Kai can remember when they’d convene at one of their homes and game until there wasn’t any alcohol left and the hour was so late only the thought of drunk, messy sex could lure the visitors out of the door. It was so relatively frequent only their youth could really excuse it, the downing of water the next morning and snuggling into their hoods at practice, praying no one paid too much attention to the dark bags shadowing their eyes, mock-angry glares when they met each other’s gazes.

Mitch will be avoiding his on Monday, and it’s for the best, because Kai’s going to punch his fucking lights out. No wonder the fucker was avoiding him for most of the journey back. He didn’t want Kai finding out about his precious little get-together with all their other friends, save until they’re all together and he can post about it all he wants, rub it in Kai’s unloved face while he doesn’t have to watch because he’s too busy snogging his boyfriend and flipping off Julian for his awful insults.

Rage digests his food, and before his heart has even slowed its rapid beat, he’s in his car, driving towards somewhere, he doesn’t know precisely, just to get fucking drunk under the guise of anonymity just to curb the urge to storm around to Mitch’s flat.

The sun falls below the road stretching out before him. It’s dark before he eventually decides his destination, pulling off and blindly retracing his steps to the club he met Luca in. He parks a few streets away, shivering against the cold air, ducking inside and heading to the bar.

His vision starts to haze after two shots, downing them with a purpose that is probably making him receive side-eyes, he couldn’t give less of a shit, and after five he’s seeing psychedelics. The dark colours of the club, the neon clothing of a group of girls near the edge of the dancefloor, the swirls of the cocktails that display nothing but toxicity, it blends into a throbbing, painful view that Kai walks straight into as he heads to the dancefloor.

Everyone is too drunk to recognise him, he realises, as a girl slips her hand around his waist for a song, his body moving of its own accord. He doesn’t stay long with any of them, flitting onto the next person who appears to be by themselves before stumbling up into the arms of a rather short man, with something in his eyes that belies gentle danger, or some other oxymoronic bullshit Kai’s drunken brain can come up with.

“Hi,” the guy says, voice sickly sweet, effeminate, there’s no question from the droop of his eyelids what he’s after, and there’s no doubting that Kai wouldn’t be interested. Kai misses his name in the veil of a particularly loud beat drop from the music. The music that the man and he are subconsciously moving to, the music that definitely has a sexual subtext to it. Kai can feel it in his blood.

He doesn’t say much, but it’s still a surprise when the guy mutters something about “getting on with it,” and beginning to head out of the same doors Luca snuck him out of a little over a week ago. There’s just enough time for Kai to chastise himself that he can’t keep doing this, once is a bad choice, twice is dangerous, three times is just asking to be caught, but he forgets all that when the guy’s lips meet his in the blackness.

“What do you do for a living?” He’s asked, maybe it’s some strange foreplay, but his mind races, as fast as it can when there’s the looming obstacle of the alcohol in his system, for an answer.

“I’m a uni student,” he gasps out finally, hoping the guy will interpret it as sexual desperation. There’s silence, save for the guy’s hand slipping further down Kai’s navel and under the waistline of his jeans. Kai’s eyes slide shut. “Studying journalism. You?”

“Unemployed,” the guy laughs without wit, slipping to his knees as Kai feels the cold air hit between his legs, semi-hard cock springing free. “What kind of journalism?”

Kai doesn’t process the question for a moment, everything he is concentrated on the feeling of the guy’s hot breath skimming over his legs and how that contrasts with the periodic gusts of ice wind hurtling towards him, even quicker than his inhibitions. He chokes out something like a beg, that prompts the guy to begin sucking his dick, and then there’s the complete chaos of not evening being able to think straight, mind too focused on the wet, gorgeous slide on his shaft.

“Football,” he groans eventually, not caring about how unsexy it sounds, given the man is gradually taking more of his dick down his throat. It’s hot, tight, soft, reminds him of all the times he’s done this to someone else, _that _someone, opens his eyes to gaze at the stairs, everything’s methodical and strange and definitely forbidden. There’s the edge to its prohibition that he wants to ride for the rest of his life.

“Nice,” the guy says, with such a casual tone that, if it wasn’t for the delicious wet sounds and the muted feeling of bliss reverberating through Kai’s veins, Kai wouldn’t know there was anything suspect even happening. “I got a blowjob from a footballer in a bathroom once. Very dangerous game for him to be playing, especially given the homophobia in that sport.”

“How are you---,” Kai groans out, before cursing at how fucking wanton he sounds. “Which footballer?”

“Julian Brandt,” echoes around the shaft of his dick, only two months after the man who bears its name was there too. “It was a couple of years ago now.”

Shock douses Kai, and suddenly, there’s no arousal in his blood at all. Really, he should be surprised his dick doesn’t fall limp in the guy’s mouth, but he’s let out a gasp of confusion before he’s over the initial shock, a sound he can’t get back because the guy’s pulled off his dick and is staring at him in confusion.

“Are you okay, Sam?” He says, and Kai forgot he lied about his name too, so he just stutters out something about hearing his friend call for him and yanks his jeans up. His dick feels gross in his underwear, damp and awkward, as he sprints out of the alleyway, back through the doors of the club. His fake name drifts in the wind behind him, not concealed by the music, the panicked thumping of his heart or the slamming of the club door. Or maybe, it’s the silent, “fuck,” he mutters when he collides with Luca.

“Oh, hello,” Luca drawls out, obviously more fucked than Kai even was, “I wondered when I’d see you again… We got kind of… interrupted last time.”

“Yes, um, I’ve got to go,” Kai says, fear beginning to grab at his flailing feet and pull him underneath the surface of the water, down to where the pressure will mount on his head by the tonne. He breaks away, gets out without being followed, heads back to his car and collapses, exhausted, scared, confused, and still suffering the effects of the waves of heartbreak crashing over him, not enough to kill him, just enough to taunt, to tantalise, onto the backseat.

He’s asleep within a minute, and it’s a miracle he wakes up, bleary-eyed and too stressed to be hungover, without being found, or being fined.

Patting around, over his body, he locates his wallet, his phone, his keys, and all the important shit which means he can escape from the village that is already becoming a hellish solitude after two visits. He turns his phone off almost three seconds after plugging it into charge (he doesn’t remember it dying), the influx of messages only serving to aggravate the headache his alcohol consumption has foretold, and he needs to at least create the driving version of stumbling home before he can allow himself to bear the brunt of the worst pain.

A couple of people are passed out on the low walls surrounding the club car park as Kai speeds by, trying not to look but also unable to tear his eyes away in the horrific search to avoid Luca and the guy he gave a blowjob to last night, under the protection of pseudonym, the guy who innocently revealed a secret about his former best friend that Kai definitely shouldn’t have reacted to with the blatant shock he did.

Maybe the guy interpreted it as merely journalistic surprise that a footballer would dare risk their own career for the sake of meaningless, drunken nightclub sex. Maybe he’s lying awake somewhere, wondering if Kai is going to sell the story to BILD, doesn’t know Kai doesn’t even know his name, let alone is any less guilty of the same sins that would send his agent into a meltdown if he ever caught wind of it.

It doesn’t explain why Kai bolted the second Julian’s name was whispered onto the length of his cock. If the guy remembers it, depending on the fractures cut by the violence of alcohol, would the look in Kai’s eyes strike him as noteworthy? Would those same eyes incriminate him next week, when his face is splashed over German television when he plays Kӧln in the derby?

His foot slams the accelerator, hoping the revs of the engine will curb his desire to scream. Or cry. Or whatever it is this fucking hangover is doing to him.

Somehow, he manages to make it back home without causing an accident, tripping over the stairs as he rushes back to his flat, praying he reaches the toilet before the bitter rising threat of vomit (a sensation he’s way more used to than he should be) materialises. It must poison his mind, because once he reaches his apartment, he collapses on the sofa, repeating an incoherent mantra that proves futile when he recollects himself spewing sick into the wastepaper basket.

There’s the familiar aftertaste of unwise alcoholism that revokes its lecture into his brain with every agonising second spent cramped over the makeshift sick-bowl, but it’s combined with a self-hatred that only provokes another bout of nausea. It’s anger, directed at everyone; Julian, his Leverkusen counterparts, whoever it was who was fucking responsible for letting his former best friend leave, Dortmund, Marco Reus, and most of all, himself, it’s anger that manifests itself in his weary sickness that he can find no plausible cure in the entire world for.

Because the only true option is telling Julian everything, and fuck knows he can’t do that.

Somewhere in his indistinct consciousness, a distant memory bubbles to the surface. Him, as a kid, listening to Lea and Jan argue about something trivial, half-listening but mainly trying to tune it out, eyes following his hamster running in its ball. The clockwork clicks of the plastic as the little legs tried to carry it to somewhere noteworthy, but never getting anywhere. It’s a perfect metaphor for how he is now, stuck in the inescapable viciousness of missing Julian, and hating himself for doing so. But unlike the hamster ball, there’s no sides. He’s trapped in the plastic, his freedom is walled up, yet he’s still trying to sprint away from the encompassing feelings, knowing it’s stupid and a waste of energy to do so, but there’s something in the way Julian smiles that makes him unable to stop.

Nothing sticks in his mind, all vomited out and there’s the euphoria of being rid of the intrusion. There’s nothing, not even a low buzz that might spell out his name in Morse Code, it’s just him. The world is still bustling on outside, he hasn’t fallen through into some alternate self-reliant universe, but he’s finally achieved some semblance of peace. It’s so foreign when he dares risk stepping outside of the depressive hive that is his flat, not feeling like he’s about to see Julian’s face imprinted on the features of every person he passes. He doesn’t trust himself, even when he ends up in the alcove by the river, staring up and down the blue-green, murky-bottomed water, that _should _remind him of Julian, but it’s so easy to shove aside.

It doesn’t last, by the time he’s lacing his football boots in training a day later, he’s already unable to reconjure the silence and berating himself for it, pleading with whoever blessed him to relent and indulge him, all the while pointedly ignoring Mitch (who he can already hear muttering to Jonathan or someone in confusion about Kai’s disregard). He’s found a hole in the plastic, only to submerge himself in a bigger hamster wheel, wrangle himself free from one reed holding him to the bottom of the river only to become entangled in another.

Unrestrained laughter emerges from somewhere else in the locker room, the practical joke quickly attracting the attention of everyone, enabling Kai to slip out onto the field. It’s cold for the time of year, involuntarily shivering as he nods hello to Lotta, taking the cones one of the assistant coaches hands to him and laying them out for the drill.

He’s focusing so intently on maintaining a normal conversation with Bosz, he doesn’t even notice his teammates beginning to swarm the training field. Mitch, unfazed by Kai’s unresponsiveness, bounds over to him, speaking without giving Kai chance to answer, not that he’d want to anyway. All he can see when he looks at his older friend is the update from his social media, the comments about Kai and his fucking melodramatics that were surely flying over the beers in Mitch’s living room.

“What are your plans for after training?” Mitch says, finally pausing.

“I don’t know,” Kai grunts, trying to convey how unbothered he is with tone exclusively, “sleep.”

“Cool,” Mitch says, smile wavering awkwardly. “Looks like the run is starting!”

If the acidic sting of betrayal wasn’t burning his skin away with such avid affliction, Kai knows he’d be able to dissociate from the situation, not take it so personally. Mitch knows more of the shit that went down between Kai and Julian than anyone else and is welcome to hang out with the man that is also his friend.

It’s more the fact his actions implied he was on Kai’s side, up until now, and Kai wasn’t prepared for the revelation.

He runs the three miles alone for the first time in two years. Some of the others try to run alongside, futilely attempting to draw him into conversation, but he feigns exhaustion and eventually, they leave him alone. If the message has already circled to Lars by the end of the slog, and the captain is shooting him particularly observant looks, he assumes a Sophia-esque face of nonchalance and pretends to be listening to the instructions from Bosz.

Peripherals reveal Mitch to be slowly creeping in his direction when they’re directed to get into groups of five, so he frantically slips into a group of four of the older lads, the ones he’d assume would be too busy discussing their kids to notice if Kai’s a little quiet. Like mornings when he’d wake up late after relentless sex with Julian, he slips back into relying on talent to carry him through the session, laughing off Sven’s passing comment about an “off day,” during the third exercise of the morning.

He manages to avoid Mitch until the fifth drill, free kicks.

“If Kai can even get this on target, we will applaud,” Lars jokes, embodying the concept of being in sync with his twin over the captaincy, laughing harder when Kai turns to flip him off. True to his word, when Kai actually forces Lukas into making a save, the twins break out into unspontaneous, yet deafening, applause.

“Nice shot,” Mitch smiles, awkwardness from Kai’s coldness finally starting to seep into his voice. Kai can’t stop himself from feeling a sick pride at the sight, even when his “thanks,” has the hint of his old, happier self, the part of him he wants Mitch to notice the absence of, in it.

Lars and Sven seem to be playing one of those games where they mirror one another, because their shots hit the exact same square of netting, Lukas unable to keep them out both times. The difficulty is upped, Kai managing to actually put in a good couple of shots despite his cloudy mood and free kicks not being his speciality, but he’s definitely not himself, doesn’t possess the fluidity he hates the media continually dissecting.

He's known for being a particularly hard worker, but today, he works himself to the brink of collapse. The plaguing fatigue wears off eventually, replaced by an even stronger frustration that only the ball cushioned by the instep of his foot can chip away at. There isn’t time for jokes, no rushed eye contact with one of the others, his eyes are fixed firmly between Bosz and the ball.

If anyone tries to make any comments, he doesn’t heed any attention. The confused glances slowly stop just when he’s considering if he should just snap.

Really, the most sociable he manages to be the entire day occurs during the customary training match at the end of the session, because their team isn’t going to get anywhere if he’s sullenly silent. They lose anyway, resigning them into collecting the equipment from where it’s strewn all over the training field from the strong gusts of wind that have periodically swept over the grass.

Most of his team are already almost changed by the time Kai trudges into the locker room, grabbing his bag unceremoniously from his bag next to Mitch’s section, briefly contemplating how quickly he’d need to get changed before Mitch tries to speak to him again.

Vaguely, he feels as if invisible, odourless smoke is starting to infiltrate the room, clouding around him and thinning the air of oxygen.

It sets his body on hyperalert.

“Kai,” Mitch sighs after a couple of minutes of reluctant silence. Kai could practically hear his name form on his older friend’s lips. In that respect, it’s almost easier to hear it voiced. “What the fuck is going on with you right now?”

“Don’t,” Kai’s voice is pitched as a growl. It isn’t intentional but judging by the look on Mitch’s face when Kai actually glances upwards for a fraction of a second, it had the effect he’d fantasised about.

“Don’t, what? Show concern for the kid who’s supposed to be like a little brother to me? Fuck that, I’m not supposed to show concern for _my teammate_?”

“No.”

His blood is starting to fizz angrily like it does when someone squares up to him on the pitch. Mitch already looks like he’s considering whether or not to deck Kai. For a second, Kai wants him to. The oxygen he lost earlier still hasn’t found its way back to him. If anything, it’s evading him at twice the intensity.

Mitch is silent for a minute, or maybe he’s just muttering to himself under his breath. Kai doesn’t give a shit.

“So, if Leon was to turn up looking like he hasn’t slept in a year and not looking anyone in the eye for the entire session, you’d just leave it?”

At the mention of his name, Kai sees Leon shift focus to their conversation and their slowly rising voices. It washes over the rest of the team like a wave, suddenly the eyes of everyone are focused into the flammable inches separating him and Mitch. The older one wants to back down, Kai can see it, but he wants to fight him, right there, unleash an innate performer inside him and revel in the shock embodied by the faces of his teammates.

“Yeah, it’s none of my fucking business.” His voice raised, to match the attention. He wouldn’t be surprised if Lars is stiffening, bracing himself for action, already.

“Why the fuck are you raising your voice at me?”

“You did it first,” Kai says, matter of fact dripping from his tone. Somewhere, someone mumbles something about intervening, and Kai doesn’t think twice about vocalising his threat.

“Havertz,” Lars says, way too softly to have any impact on the slow-build of anger-infused lactate in him. Respect for his captain, for the consequences, is somewhere on the train to Munich right about now, his only concern is now letting this showdown with Mitch end without fireworks.

“Bro, why are you being so fucking disrespectful?” Mitch says, finally.

“You’re one to talk about being fucking respectful,” Kai says, losing his head with all the speed of a top sprint, “when you’ve agreed with everything I’ve said about Brandt since the cunt snaked us, and then I see the two of you having some sort of fucking date and betraying all the promises you made to me!”

“I’ve never made any promise to you about Julian, except to keep the fact that you’re fucking in love with him and have fucked him more times than anyone could count a secret.” Mitch fires back, and there’s deathly fucking silence. It rings out, filling the room, while the words settle in the crevices. Mitch half-yelled it, everyone was already watching intently, there’s no way any of them missed it. The only difference is the absence of provocative whispers flitting between various members of the squad as the realisation sets in.

“DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE USE THAT AGAINST ME, YOU FUCKING CUNT,” Kai screams, words laced with expletives, arms lashing out at Mitch of their own accord. He doesn’t know how, he can’t breathe, he’s being suffocated by the humiliation and the resentment, but he’s laid a bleeding scratch across Mitch’s face before Jonathan manages to reach him and pin his arms behind his back.

“In the physio room. Now.” Someone, maybe Bosz, says. The room is silent again, everyone’s eyes trained accusingly on Kai as Jonathan drags him to the treatment room.

There’s so much more he craves to say, wishing he could reveal Sam and Mitch’s relationship only the start of it (but no, the fuckers were so obvious everyone knows already), he wants to do so much more than just a mere puny scratch marking the older one’s face, then he wants to go home and do the same to his own fucking skin. Maybe then he could cut away all the baggage dragging him down and making him act like this.

Waiting for Bosz and Lars to storm through the door conjoining the rooms feels like a lifetime, but they finally arrive, veins pulsating out of their foreheads almost comically. Kai would laugh if he wasn’t suddenly terrified.

He expects shouting, to be berated for so long the team’s returned for training tomorrow before Bosz even lowers his voice a decibel, but he isn’t greeted with it. Both of them keep their distance, as if they’re afraid Kai might assault them too. It’s right about then that the final traces of fury dissipate from his body, replaced by overriding shame. It’s a carousel of emotions, _he’s _a carousel of emotions, nothing is sticking, all replenishing with something else when someone else turns up to face him.

“We have a game in six days,” Bosz sighs, and that’s not really the way Kai expected this conversation to begin, frantically scrambling to readjust from his assumed direction. “You’re lucky Weiser picked up a knock in training today and probably won’t be playing anyway, because then everyone would see, and the amount of explaining we’d have to do for your recklessness would be insane.”

There isn’t anything to say, even if the embarrassment relented for long enough to enable him to speak.

“We will be punishing you, but we can’t demote you to the under-nineteens or something with the derby on Sunday. We decided, as a team, that you’re too important for that, so we’re going to find the appropriate retribution.” Lars’ voice is equally calm, void of the annoyance Kai can see flickering behind his eyes from the other side of the room.

Kai should thank them, because all he wants is to play (and make out with Julian, but even that’s secondary to his childhood love), but the lack of oxygen he took in during the argument has caught up with him, the first wave of punishment and he’s completely defenceless to it. Writing it on his face is the best he can do.

“Do you want to talk about the things Mitch said about you?”

“I couldn’t think of anything worse,” he says robotically, unaware of the sentiment until it’s passed his lips already. “He’s gone, what’s the point?”

Lars purses his lips. Kai doesn’t miss the look he shares with Bosz.

“There’s no point trying to deny it, is there?”

They both shake their heads, eyeing him with unfiltered awkwardness. He confirmed it anyway, everyone knows now, Mitch outed him to the entire team and most of the coaching staff, the only blessing being it wasn’t an open practice with media lingering, overhearing the altercation and being free to publish what Mitch said to the entire world.

Kai can hear the homophobic abuse ringing in his ears already, and Julian hating him forever for exposing him, too. Shouts of ‘faggot,’ the signs incriminating him, they’re playing to the forefront of his mind with strength he hasn’t experienced since he came out to Julian all those years ago.

“I guess we know why he’s been acting so differently lately,” Bosz murmurs, and Kai doesn’t know if it’s intended for him or for Lars. He chooses the former,

“I’m not heartbroken.”

If he can’t deny that he’s in love, he can at least deny that his intentions are due to Julian leaving.

“You’re not?” It’s obvious neither of them could believe him for all the Euros in the country.

“No. I’m different, because it’s called ‘growing up.’”

“If this is the person you’re growing into, we don’t want you anywhere near our team,” Bosz says sharply, opening the door and checking that the dressing room is deserted. It must be, because suddenly he’s telling Kai to go home and think over what he’s done, instructing him to return to training in forty-eight hours and not before.

“The club will fake an explanation,” he says as Kai leaves, obviously disregarding the fact it completely juxtaposes what he said about Mitch earlier. He doesn’t stay to question it, using the buzz of his phone in his pocket, staring at the device without taking any of the information in, to feign nonchalance as the prowls through the corridors to the carpark, knowing every single person in the building will know about his actions. For some inexplicable reason, it’s particularly flooring when he makes eye contact with Lotta, who’s waiting to speak to Bosz.

He catches a glimpse of Leon Goretzka’s profile picture when his eyes finally focus on the list of notifications, opening their text thread.

**Leon: **hey, my flight back from london got diverted to cologne, and the train i booked for tonight doesn’t leave until half eight. any chance i could come visit you for a couple of hours?

Kai really doesn’t want to be around anyone following the fiasco of today and the raging awkwardness of when Jannis visited a couple of days ago, but the alternative is being left alone with his guilt multiplying, so he texts back affirmation and manages to lose himself in the drive back to his home.

Leon isn’t quite waiting outside his door when he arrives, but he hasn’t even got so far as run his comb through his messy curls before there’s a knock on his door.

So many people. So many voices. So many opinions, it’s sweltering, it’s exhausting, it’s utterly awful, he thinks as he pulls open the door and forces a smile for his old friend. They met the same day Kai properly met Julian (the hopeless admiration from the other side of the training complex the occasional times their training schedules coincided aside), Kai only associating him with the constant giggling with a short guy who, unsurprisingly, became his boyfriend.

The memories of the things he admitted to Max in Ibiza, before Julian ran off and was sick in a gutter and Kai could barely bring himself to keep from following him, ring through his head as he greets Leon and lets him in, allowing his friend to talk his ear off about his boyfriend like he’s completely oblivious to Kai’s feelings. Which, given Kai has no idea how much Leon actually knows, is pretty likely.

Kai doesn’t even realise Leon’s asked him a question until he catches onto the inquisitive look in Leon’s eyes.

“Did you listen to a word I just said?” Leon laughs, “Max said you were all kinds of distant when he last saw you. Some things don’t change.”

“Yeah,” Kai says, resolutely ignoring any sense of pungency that might trickle into his words. “I guess I’ve just been really tired lately.”

“Struggling with the fame?”

“You could say that,” he jokes back, because really it couldn’t be further from the truth when he’s still able to get shitfaced in clubs and suck a random man off in an alleyway. “How was London?”

Leon looks at him incredulously, and there’s the awkward moment when the realisation that Leon’s been talking about the English capital for the past fifteen minutes sets in, but mercifully his friend merely summarises his answer before turning back to Kai.

“I didn’t get to congratulate you on your crazy season personally,” Leon says, “it was insane. You must be so adored in Leverkusen.”

A little harsh part of Kai might want to laugh at how horrifically incorrect Leon seems to be about seemingly every aspect of his life, but it isn’t the Bayern player’s fault. It’s no one’s fault when he’s constantly telling people conflicting stories, and sneaking off to hit the self-destruct button, returning like none of this shit ever happened in the first place.

“It’s nice. The fans are good---, um, yeah.”

One of the things Kai’s always admired most about Leon is his complete lack of abash to express his confusion. Julian and he had raved about the fans during the final international break of the season, only a couple of months ago, and comparatively Kai’s voice must sound so void of emotion. He smiles weakly in response.

“What’s going on with you right now? I keep hearing things from various people that you’re not doing so good, and it’s really obvious now I see you in person?” Leon asks, barely allowing time for Kai to be dumbstruck before he’s rushing to explain, “sorry if the question is too personal or anything. But you look weirdly exhausted, and you’re not showing any of your signature comedic behaviour.”

“Signature comedic behaviour?” Kai attempts to mock, voice not quite capturing the teasing lilt required, so it sounds flat and borderline accusative. “Sorry, wrong tone, um, I’m fine.”

The amount of belief Leon has at Kai’s answer is easily quantifiable; absolutely zero. 

“Okay… How are things with Julian?”

Leon hits a nerve. He knows that realisation settles over the older one precisely four seconds after the words pass his lips, in that four seconds all the blood has drained from Kai’s face, running cold in his veins, he forces himself to swallow violently as he eyes the Bayern player. It might be the most adverse reaction he’s had to someone uttering the name of his former best friend since his departure, is most definitely the explicitly most dramatic he’s experienced, however the combination of the turmoil of his day and the sudden question is a metaphorical hammer blow to his temple.

“I---, um,” his eyes fall on the clock and he has to cut his lip with his teeth to keep from cursing because Leon is supposed to be staying for another two hours. 

“Max told me everything,” Leon interjects, “you might not even remember what you said to him, because he made it out like you were fucked out of your mind, but you admitted so many thoughts about him, even though you did specifically hold back from saying you loved him.”

“That was before I admitted it to myself,” Kai says lowly, unsure if Leon can hear him and unsure if the sentiment was even intended for his friend in the first place. 

“I’m guessing by your reaction… it isn’t going so well?”

“I haven’t spoken to him in a month.”

“He’s ignoring you?”

“No,” Kai says, feeling an intensely weird pressure to eke out such a simple word. “I blocked him.”

Leon purses his lips like he wants to say something, but then looks away, deciding against it. Of course, he did. One sign of how fucking fragile Kai’s been acting, and they turn judgemental, fearful of the potential for melodrama Kai possesses if they even dare venture near their thoughts.

“You still love him?” The older one says eventually, which probably makes no sense in the context of Kai’s self-evaluation, but at least it’s something.

“Yeah,” he sighs out, not caring if Leon goes and screams it from the rooftops. He doesn’t think he could bring himself to care if Leon physically ran to Julian’s new house in Dortmund and told him. Kai wouldn’t move from his bed for a week, but that’s probably just due to the low mood that’s been hanging over him recently. “I’m trying not to, though.”

“One of the hardest things anyone can ever attempt to do,” Leon sighs, staring at the carpet like he’s flashing back to what must have been terrible months after he split from Max. Kai and Julian are almost embolic of them, if it wasn’t for the fact Leon and Max were actually in love prior to the separation. “Don’t hate yourself if you find it impossible for ages. Maybe you’ll see him at the international break and getting over him will feel like you’ve been asked to scale Everest in a t-shirt. Or maybe, it’ll feel okay, and then you’ll come back to Leverkusen and leaving him will feel horrific. Or maybe it’ll be the easiest thing in the world to look him in the eye.”

“Thanks,” he breathes, sincerity masked by encompassing awkwardness. “It’s not that easy to talk about him.”

“I get that. I can relate to him, though. Max acted like I was invisible after my transfer to Bayern was announced, for a whole six months. That was part of the reason why Schalke forced him out.”

“Why did you do it?” Kai can’t stop himself from asking, subjecting himself to the fear that strikes him when Leon’s face crosses with momentary anguish. “I mean, because---,”

“I know what you meant,” Leon sighs, looking more done with Kai’s shit than anything else. It’s no secret Kai’s question leads itself explicitly to fantasising the possibilities of Julian returning his feelings, the answer to the one question no hints could ever confirm for him, even when sometimes he re-watches their interviews (mainly to torture himself at what he shredded) and he can’t miss the way Julian looked at him.

He wouldn’t, anymore, if they actually spent any time together. The international break is only two weeks away, but Kai can almost guarantee they won’t talk. If they’re roomed together, he’s already planning to ask to swap rooms with someone random, and his eyes glance past Leon’s mid-daydream when he realises the Bayern player has finished speaking.

“I think I should go,” Leon says eventually, Kai grateful the older one has the bravery to break the silence. “You look really unwell.”

“I’m just tired and dealing with a lot of shit, you know that.”

“Yeah, I do,” Leon says, drowning out whatever he mutters next with the sound of him rising from the sofa. If he wasn’t so sapped, Kai might question him, but really, he’s relieved Leon’s leaving. “There might be an earlier train I could catch anyway.”

“You’ve got training tomorrow?”

“Double session, it starts at nine,” Leon pulls a face, walking himself to the door before Kai realises that he should probably see his national teammate out. It’s much easier to do it like this, pretend Leon’s only leaving because of one of the few strains of their career, as opposed to walking out to avoid the awkwardness caused by Kai’s inability to stop going on dreamlike tangents about his former best friend. Leon gives him a hug that is maybe the most awkward moment of the entire night, before slipping out of the door.

Silence looms in his apartment, no heavy breathing, residue of the anger from the showdown at training earlier in the day (that already feels like a lifetime ago, what the fuck is going on with him?), he doesn’t explode in a fit of emotion, just slides down the wood melodramatically and stares at the lights turning on sporadically in the massive apartment block over the road.

• • • • • •

Sophia normally texts before she heads over to Kai’s flat, so part of him is already surprised when she rings up, requesting entrance. Even so, it doesn’t even begin to equate to the fear that actually does consume him this time (it might be the delayed onset of the severity of what Leon inflicted on him yesterday), when he sees the hardened look in her eyes. She always wears makeup, but somehow there’s something in the way she’s done it that amplifies whatever annoyance she’s exhibiting, Kai not knowing if it’s aimed at him.

“Hi,” she says, voice so blunt he gets his answer instantly. Her tone is simmering, barely keeping a lid on it, and _fuck_, it’s worse than Kai first thought. He’s seen her like this before, but never directed at him.

“Hi,” if the barely concealed gulp is obvious, Sophia’s too pissed to care.

“Why aren’t you in training?” Sophia asks, sounding altogether more collected already. It’s more of a façade than Kai trying to pretend like he’s over Julian, but it’s enough to trick Kai into answering her question honestly.

“I had a fight with Mitch yesterday. They told me to take the day off while they think about what to do with me.”

“A physical fight?”

“I scratched his face,” Kai admits, “I would’ve done more if Jonathan didn’t hold me back. But it was mostly verbal, he outed me to the rest of the team---,”

“Oh, please, there’s no way they didn’t know, unless they’re all deaf and blind,” Sophia rolls her eyes, repeats it with incensed aggression when she sees the attempt at difference Kai put in his expression. “You’re seriously telling me there’s no way you didn’t stare whenever Julian took his shirt off in the locker room, or that no one in the hotel room next to you heard you fucking?”

“We stayed almost silent for that exact reason. And, I thought I was pretty good at keeping from staring at Julian too much.” It’s not exactly a lie, but Kai doesn’t want to confess to the other reason now, the one about hiding feelings, because he knows Sophia and knows it’s only going to aggravate her further. 

“If you were anything like when we used to hang out together, you definitely weren’t.”

“Why are you doing this, Soph? Yeah, I shouldn’t have attacked Mitch, but he betrayed me---,”

“HOW?” Sophia interrupts with an almost ear-splitting yell. “How,” she repeats, quieter yet far more dangerous, “did he betray you? Because he didn’t end his friendship with a good friend just because he didn’t stay? I know all about it, he and Sam told me about how they begged him to tell you about the transfer, how they searched for hours in the scorching heat just to find you bleeding in some foliage, the comments others have said about you they’ve defended you from, and you thank him by scratching him in the fucking face?”

“I--- I didn’t know about that last one.”

“But you knew about the other two?” Kai nods, unable to speak in the face of her frustration. “They’re already enough to explain the debts you owe them, the last one is just extra! Kai, if anyone somehow didn’t know you were in love with Julian, like you’re so insistent they didn’t, the way you’ve been acting, the way you’ve been treating others, the way you’ve been treating _Julian _when he never did anything but support you is more than enough evidence. And, just in case you forgot, they might not be angry at him, but Mitch, Sam, your teammates, they all lost Julian too! Your love for him doesn’t mean you own him!”

“I know---,” he stutters, “I never said I did.”

“You didn’t have to!” Sophia’s responses are so rapid-fire, it’d sound rehearsed if it wasn’t for the pure, unmistakable rage that can never be synthesised for show. “The way you’ve been acting is enough! I won’t lie to you, I saw on your snapchat that you were at home, so I texted Mitch about it because I was certain you were meant to be at training, and he told me everything, and you better fucking make it up to him quickly because you’re this close to losing someone who’s always been there for you.”

“MAYBE I DON’T FUCKING CARE!” Kai yells, voice rising a hundred decibels from out of nowhere, despite the knowledge that he’ll regret it the moment he’s calmed down. “MAYBE, I’M FUCKING SICK OF THE FACT THEY ALL STILL PREFER JULIAN, THEY’D DRIVE THROUGH THE TRAFFIC TO GO AND SEE HIM, TO SUPPORT HIM WITH ALL THAT FUCKING PAIN HE MUST BE FEELING WHEN IT’S HIS FAULT, HE DECIDED TO LEAVE. IF IT WAS UP TO ME, WE’D STILL BE TOGETHER IN LEVERKUSEN AND WE WOULDN’T BE HAVING THIS CONVERSATION!”

“No, we wouldn’t, BECAUSE YOU’D BE TOO BUSY FUCKING HIM LIKE IT WASN’T HURTING YOU EVERY TIME YOU DID IT. IT’S THAT PAIN KAI, THAT’S MAKING YOU TREAT ALL OF US LIKE THIS!”

“YEAH, WELL, MAYBE I THINK IT WAS WORTH IT, EVEN WHEN IT ENDED LIKE IT DID!”

Sophia looks at him, dumbfounded. Her voice is soft when she speaks again, like a mother comforting a child mid-tantrum, trying to calm someone who doesn’t see reason. It makes Kai feel like an idiot, causes his rage to plummet down to Earth and it’s right about then he realises how shittily he’s acted. “Do you really think that, Kai? Or are you just saying that, because you hate admitting you’re weak?”

Kai’s throat closes, his eyes beginning to water like they do in the way that proceeds a panic attack. Sophia keeps talking at him, nit-picking at all of his failures, her words swirling around in his ears, graffitiing themselves with the boldest spray-paint on the insides of his eyelids to taunt him every time he blinks, internally he’s screaming out for her to stop so he can collect himself, but he can’t make himself form the words so he’s a helpless, choking mess. His eyes close, glue themselves together so he can’t look at her face as she goes in on him, he knows she’s doing this because she cares but _fuck _it’s murdering him, he wishes she could just see that on his face and just stop for now.

She doesn’t, if she notices, and really, it’s what he deserves.

“Kai?” He realises eventually that she’s calling his name, but she might as well be in Dortmund too for all the help it is. It’s so distant, so foreign compared to the screaming echoing inside his head, he’s eloped somewhere else and is hurtling through the stars of breakdown at a million miles an hour. His heartbeat is far too fast, the air he’s trying to breathe in not _settling_, he thinks he feels the top of his kitchen counter against his hands, but he can’t be sure. “Kai, are you okay?”

“No,” he tries to say, but there’s that serpent again, the one that snaked its way around his vocal cords the day in Barcelona when he discovered the news that set all this fucking shit off, his words getting caught in its attack.

“Fuck, Kai, what’s going on?” Sophia says, Kai can hear her more clearly now and maybe that’s it, maybe the worst is over? He still can’t answer her but maybe he doesn’t need to speak, if he gets to the sofa, then he’ll be okay. “You were never like this before, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to get so mad.”

He wants to tell her that it’s okay, that it’s what he needed to hear and his adverse reaction is just because he’s an overdramatic fucking cunt, but he can’t, so he lets her lead him to the sofa, falling back into the cushions and wishing he could melt away. He made it through the worst, there’s just the humiliating aftereffects and the red blotch that must be staining his cheeks remaining now, combined with all the questions Sophia is poised to ask.

“I thought it was just a one-time thing,” she murmurs into his hair when he’s finally stable. “How many times has this happened?”

“A couple,” he whispers, “I’m sorry, Soph. I know how it looks, breaking down when you finally challenge me for how much of a fuck-up I’ve been, but---,” she tries to shush him, but no, he has to get these words out before it’s too late. “I really appreciate it. You’re the fucking best.”

“I know,” she laughs, and he manages to open his eyes to see her flick her hair over her shoulder. “I’m really sorry.”

“No, don’t be, I’m just weak like you said,” he jokes, knowing he hits a bit of an awkward spot, but she doesn’t say anything, just smiles and chucks his head onto the sofa.

“I hate to leave you, especially since I basically came over to yell at you and then leave again, but I’ve got class, and---,”

“It’s okay, don’t worry. Come over again soon, though,” he tells her, letting her see herself out after placing the tiniest kiss on her cheek. There isn’t anything else for him to do, so he binges some shitty Netflix series and almost forgets to move from the sofa to his bedroom before he goes to bed. The last thing he sees is a text from Lars asking him to arrive at the training complex half an hour before the rest of the team.

Dreams recounting the day plague him, attack his vulnerability to torrent him of the way he lost his head in front of everyone, the looks on his teammates’ faces when they realised Mitch’s insinuation, the one that he knows will settle in the back of his mind to periodically mock him when he’s forty and still sleeping alone. He wakes feeling groggy in place of rested, muscles screaming at him when he tries to sling himself out of the warmth of his bedsheets, muttering curses at the captain for disturbing him so early. At the thought of Lars, the reality hits him again for what must be the fiftieth time, his stomach churning and the bagel he’s made himself for breakfast suddenly looks horrendously unappetising.

Something’s pinching at his nose, preventing him from tasting while he swallows down the bread as purposefully as he can manage, praying that it counteracts the knot in his stomach instead of rebounding off it and coming back up. Save for the one text that he didn’t actually acknowledge, he’s had no contact with any of the team, all he knows is that they spent yesterday digesting him and perfecting the judgemental looks of steel he’s going to be presented with this morning.

He cycles to the training ground, if only to rid his thoughts into the wind. Lars, Sven, Mitch, Bosz, their cars are already there, alongside another which Kai has seen before, but still can’t place who it belongs to. Part of him wants to labour at the bike racks, delay the second round of reprimand, when his eyes flicker upwards and he spots Bosz watching him through the window of his office.

Kai sits down on the bench in the locker room not even thirty seconds later.

“Hi,” Lars says, echoed by his brother and Mitch, and then, Kai himself. “I don’t want this to feel like some kind of school mediational process, but we obviously need to talk through what happened at training on Monday. I tried to keep gossip at a minimum yesterday, but there was a bit of conversation and I think you know what the surprise was.”

Kai opens his mouth, thankfully cut off by Mitch because he doesn’t know what the fuck he was about to say. His mind is a river, flowing downstream, being caught by a fallen tree blocking off every path as the water begins to climb against the wood, the overspill not a threat but the future, right until Mitch throws a cement wall right into the stream. “I’m sorry, Kai. What I said about you was really out of line, especially since I know how hard it is to be gay in this life, and the least I could’ve done was wait until you were ready to come out on your own terms.”

“It’s okay, I’m, um, I’m sorry about the scratches and the things I said about you, and him, too--,” Kai’s cut off by Sven bustling through the door, apologising loudly for being delayed (Kai’s got no idea where he was, given Sven’s car was in the complex when he arrived), and giving Kai enough time to take a proper look at the scratches on Mitch’s face. They can’t have been that deep, the excessive bleeding merely a ruse for the severity, because all that’s left is a couple of scabby claw marks. The intent behind them remains, Kai can’t write that off too, but the tension in the air has received a dousing of amicability.

“Thanks for your apology,” Mitch says, and Kai can tell his friend means it. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay with everyone knowing?”

“Not exactly like I can deny it,” Kai laughs, and for the first time in ages it feels like it’s really genuine. “I would’ve come out eventually anyway, and besides, Sophia told me it’s not like you guys hadn’t guessed.”

“She’s wrong, actually, for all the good she is,” Sven interjects, reiterating the belief Kai screamed at her yesterday and there’s a weird sense of _actually being right? _ “If you did have all the sex during away games and shit that Mitch accused you of, you must have been really quiet, because no one had ever suspected a thing. Yeah, of course we all caught the longing glances you’d shoot at each other, and I think a couple of the idiots made a betting pool about when you were going to get together, but no one ever had any solid proof that there was something between the two of you.”

“It was purely sexual,” Kai says, stifling a grin at the abject look of horror in Lars’ expression. “Well, on the surface, it was just that anyway, sorry Lars. My behaviour in the past couple months shows what I felt, but we can’t be together if only one of us actually has feelings for the other.”

Something flickers across Mitch’s face, the same look that resonated in Jannis’ when Kai pressured him to answer those questions about Julian a couple of weeks back. He’s had almost no contact with Julian’s brother since, wonders if Julian even knows about the encounter. There’s no repudiating that Julian must have said something to belie some quantity of emotion for Kai, too many people have given him too many hints (unless, he shudders, they all decided to play with his feelings as revenge), but the likelihood of that remaining after Kai quintessentially told him to fuck off is nothing. Even if it somehow was still true, Kai’s not sure if he’d know how to approach it anyway.

Lars finally speaks through the silence, “on the topic of behaviour, we decided on an appropriate punishment. Like we said on Monday, the team upheld the decision for you not to be demoted to the under-nineteens, because we need you for the derby, so instead you’re going to clean the team’s boots after training for the rest of this week. And don’t you dare think about doing anything like that again, or Bosz will be in the meeting next time.”

“I don’t want that,” he tries to joke. Really, he could complain at the tedious process cleaning the boots involves, but it does allow him to keep doing what he loves, so he nods and accepts Lars’ conditions. He thinks he’s done, there’s only ten minutes before the team is due in the dressing room but judging by the tone of Lars’ voice as he drags Kai back into reality, they’re definitely not. “Yes?”

“You know you mentioned Sophia earlier?”

At least when Kai cycled through the gates of the training ground, he knew what he should be expecting from the outcome of the conversation. Discussing Sophia is definitely not on that list.

“Yeah, what about her?”

“She rang me yesterday evening, like she said she would after she went around to your flat to let you know what she thought, but she told us some things that have made us really worried, Kai,” Mitch begins, oblivious to the sweat starting to prickle over Kai’s skin. There’s only one option that Mitch could be talking about, and Kai would rather die than hear it. “She told us that you’ve been having these attacks, when you sort of break down, she told me that you called her in a panic a couple of weeks ago and arrived to broken plates, blood and vomit.”

‘The latter of which is going to make a reappearance if Mitch doesn’t shut up,’ Kai thinks drily, the only way he can get some sort of respite from the pain of the talk. 

“Then she told us that she literally watched you go into this horrible state of shock or something, she told us she was calling your name, but you just zoned out and sobbed.” All three of their faces are so full of concern, Kai can’t look at them anymore, gaze falling to the floor and focusing on the inscriptions of his name on his trainers. “She told us that she could hear you muttering Julian’s name under your breath.”

Kai’s snapped back to the conversation from dissociation for the second time in two minutes. It’s terrifying, because he spent so long trying to get his thoughts out to reassure her, believing it was just because his throat was constricted, not because they were being suppressed by an outpouring of want for his former best friend.

“Yeah,” he laughs, “silly, right? Don’t worry, last night was the last time that will happen, I promise. I’m sure it was only brought on by guilt or something, she was going in.”

None of them even have a flicker of a smile on their faces.

“Kai, if your mental health isn’t that good---,” Sven starts, and _fuck_, Kai knows where this is going, Sven’s going to embark on a spiel about _talking _that is only going to serve to eject Kai’s breakfast back up.

“I’m fine, honestly!” He says, desperate to sound as convincing as possible (and it seems, finally, that the weeks of continuous practice have paid off), “I appreciate your concern though.”

“I wasn’t done---,” Sven continues, but then he’s cut off by the dressing room door bursting open and Kevin, Leon and Lukas barging in, laughing about some Twitter joke as they greet all four players. The captain’s twin tries to get them to leave again, but Kai snatches the opportunity and races to begin dressing, pretty sure Kevin hasn’t even taken his shoes off before he’s out of the complex and onto the field, apology to Bosz already falling from his lips.

The coach waves him off with a soft smile and a direction to where the boots are cleaned, actually laughing at Kai’s rebuttal about already knowing from his youth days.

“I forget you’ve been here for years, kid. Lars seems to think you’re his son.”

“It feels that way sometimes,” he says, smiling at the captain, trailing across the training fields towards them. It doesn’t take long for the rest of the team to emerge, a couple ribbing Kai about his punishment, but thankfully there’s no mention of Mitch’s outing. He doesn’t know if that’s a choice, or if they don’t like him enough to call him out. He braces himself for the next bout of internalised homophobia.

Despite all the shit, all the questions, he still manages to find some sort of peace during the training session. His shots are sharp, he’s playing in passes like he hasn’t all season, it’s the best he’s done in training since May and everyone can see it. It doesn’t stop him from traipsing to the cleaning room after practice, smiling at Lotta who’s lingering to grab someone for an interview, instantly tuning in on scrubbing the mud and running the water, pointedly ignoring Sven’s attempts to talk to him.

“Sven?” Lotta says, “can I interview you, please?”

Kai doesn’t know if Lotta knows his predicament, but he couldn’t be more grateful to her. He’s left alone, lets a couple of residual tears drip into the sink and mix with the tap, but at least he gets to resign into his own headspace and not into the one that everyone’s conceived of him.

Cursing as soap stings a cut in his hand, maybe left over from the broken plate fiasco, he watches a trickle of water run down his wrist. It’s stupid, incredibly facetious of him to liken it, but the memory’s in the forefront of his mind and he can’t ignore it now; Julian, shirtless, wet and beautiful on a summer’s day off last year (after the heartbreak of the World Cup, Kai took it upon himself to take care of him), feet dangling into the river that runs pretty near to the training complex. They’d been swimming, and they were lounging there, feeling the sun warm their skin and just _living. _It didn’t matter about the stupid comments Kai would make about sunscreen, Julian’s laugh would make his stomach scrunch and he _wanted that feeling more than anything else in the world_.

Somewhere along the corridor, he can hear one of the youth teams in the gym, hollering about something embarrassing happening to one of them. He remembers the days, in the same room the youths are in now, when he and the rest of the team would stay late after training and fantasise about being in the Bundesliga. So few of them make it, injuries or education or fading into irrelevancy slicing their aspirations into a million pieces, but somehow, he did.

There’s no way he can allow it to slip away from him just because he’s fallen in love. He owes it to everyone, his family, his youth coaches, the hierarchy at Bayer who got him this far, to become the best, most successful player he can. He could hate himself; it wouldn’t be a foreign sensation for him after years of what he’s put himself under, but really, it’s not fair. It’s not like he chose to be in love with Julian, it just happened.

Looking back, he still can’t see any way that it wouldn’t happen. From the moment Julian bundled into the locker room after returning from the Olympics (or maybe that day in Bremen when Kai was nine), Kai’s been a little bit fucked. Hindsight can’t change that, hindsight won’t change the way Julian treated him, the care the older one took of him when they had sex.

It’s not his fault, but he has to shoulder this never-ending brunt. Every second, it shoves against him, pressing down and maybe that’s what causes those breakdowns, the sledgehammer squashes him for a brief second and he’s fine once he’s sprung back up.

The door clicks open, and his stomach fills with dread as he looks up from where he’s scrubbing Lukas’ boots, panic arising when he thinks of Sven’s consistent attempts to talk to him. He’s so convinced to see the twin of the captain, seeing Lotta’s slightly messy blonde hair blunder through the door throws him completely.

“Hi,” he says, laugh behind his voice when she trips over one of the remaining pairs of boots discarded on the floor, swearing fiendishly, flipping Kai off when she hears his amusement. “I’m not gonna lie, I don’t think here’s the best place to interview me.”

“Oh, yeah, and have the entirety of Germany wonder why you’re stuck by a dirty sink, cleaning boots. You wouldn’t want the stress of the accusations,” she chucks back, passing Kai the next pair of cleats, and he’s unable to hide his smile. She isn’t wrong. “But no, that’s not why I came here, actually. I came to talk to you.”

“Yes, I did scratch Mitch in the face---,”

“I _know _that. I overheard the conversation between you and the rest of them this morning. And I’m sorry if it seems weird that I’m here, given we haven’t exactly had many interactions, apart from the time you--,”

“—ran straight into you,” Kai finishes, both of them falling into laughter like they’ve been friends for years. With everything that clouded his mind intensifying tenfold recently, he hasn’t put any more thought into where he might know her from, disregarding it to probably having heard her name (or someone else with the same name as her) mentioned in passing.

“I wanted to ask you how you’re doing since Jule left?”

“If I had a Euro for every conversation about him, I’d be a very rich man,” Kai jokes, waving off the apology he can already see rising in Lotta’s throat. “I still can’t believe I was dumb enough to accuse everyone of not caring about me!”

Lotta’s eyebrows furrow in confusion, so he shrugs her off with some throwaway comment. He’s more intrigued by the fact she referred to Julian as _Jule_, like she knew him, the way she spoke about him, the casual friendship dripping from her tone.

“To answer your question, it’s not been easy, but I think I’ve finally turned a corner and I’m hoping shit should be better from here,” he says honestly. “But really, and sorry if this comes across as rude, but do you know Julian from somewhere? It’s just, the way you referred to him, and, well---.” Kai cuts himself off when he sees the slow smirk appearing on Lotta’s face, the short eyebrow raise that belies he’s about to receive a story with revelations he definitely isn’t prepared for.

“I was his first relationship,” she tells him, and _what_, Kai’s sure the world has slid off its axis and is now rotating at a forty-five-degree angle, everything feels slightly inverted, because how the _fuck _has something of this coincidental value actually occurred? Suddenly, he’s reverted back to a day, date meaningless, maybe last year, lying on one side of Julian’s couch while his former best friend demolished someone at Fortnite, giggling about their past relationships. Kai’d only had one, some girl he’d ‘dated’ for about two weeks just to experience his first kiss, but Julian had imparted about some adolescent romances, including with a girl named _Lotta Schneider._

Kai’s pretty sure his brain moves at the same speed as Mertesacker on the pitch, or the rate Lӧw makes sensical decisions about the national team. It’s not like the name’s uncommon, but he should’ve figured due to her interest in football and his interest in Julian, the knowing looks she shot him were just the cusp.

A minutely awkward silence settles on the cleaning room, which is really no more than a cupboard. It’s tense, Kai can barely conceal that he’s desperate to know more about what happened between the two of them, combined with wishing he was still best friends with Julian so he could mock him for all his sixteen-year-old pick-up lines. Curiosity wins out, and before he knows it, she’s perching on the side of the sink Kai’s not using and beginning to retell their story.

“I moved schools because I wanted to get better teaching, I was already writing articles at his youth team, but he’d never paid me a single glance. He was always so focused,” she smiles gently, looking like she’s rushed back to those sunny afternoons in Bremen six or seven years ago, before all of this fame, disappointment, the loops of their career have imposed themselves. “On my first day, we got sat next to each other in biology with this crazy as fuck teacher, I think his name was Schmidt or something but honestly, he was so insane, always telling Julian and I off for talking too much.”

“How long were you friends before you got together?”

“Like two weeks,” she blushes, “it was around the time he was debating whether or not to sign for Wolfsburg, I kept telling him to go for it, but he was so uncertain… well, until…”

“Until?” He prompts. He thinks he remembers what Julian said about leaving Bremen, why he doesn’t miss it except for his family. But still, he’s suddenly extremely interested in Lotta’s version.

“He didn’t want to rush things, he barely even kissed me that much,” Lotta stops for a second, maybe wanting to recount everything in the right order, Kai stopping to think about how little Julian kissed him too, “and I misinterpreted it as him not wanting to be with me or being embarrassed, and then, stupidly, I associated that with him being gay. It didn’t help, that at the same time, I was developing a friendship with the school team captain, this guy called Lewis, which Julian was pretty jealous of.”

“He’s always had a protective streak,” Kai says, purely because he feels obligated to say _something._

“That’s true, but then I fucked up really badly. We were hanging out at one of Julian’s best friend’s house, and I got really drunk and passed out, so Julian and his other friend, Dan, carried me home, but then I started rambling about how badly I wanted to fuck Lewis, by which point I wasn’t even drunk, just malicious. He dumped me the next day, so then I texted one of the popular girls with a rumour that he was gay as a joke, and by the time I arrived at school the following morning, the entire school was abuzz with the gossip. Julian barely attended class for the next two weeks, and then left all of a sudden, and look where he is now.”

“Wow,” Kai breathes, because all the memories of Julian’s life story have come surging back with the same emotion weighing in Julian’s eyes that night. It had seemed so out of place then, so inconceivable and nonsensical, before Kai had known pain anything like it. 

“We have that in common, you know.”

“What?”

“Both of us had our hearts broken by him. I know it sounds so stupid coming from me, given what I did to him and how quickly I got with Lewis after he left, but I was so self-absorbed I wallowed in my own pain for ages.”

“Oh, me too.”

“You’re different, though. You genuinely care about him. You might try to pretend that you’re okay, and that’s fine for some of the time, because the amount of composure your career requires demands that of you, so long as you admit that sometimes it’s not so great. But anyone with eyes can see that you felt things for Julian that you didn’t feel for anyone else. That’s not self-absorbance. That’s love, Kai. I used to always assume you two were together when I was watching on television.”

“How did you know I’m into guys?”

“I didn’t, but I know he is, so the maths didn’t take long, even though I was obviously incorrect,” Lotta sighs, gesturing to Kai’s punishment that is still not got any further to completion than half-an-hour ago when she walked in. “A couple of years later, he sent me several drunk texts about how I was right and that he was coming back to Bremen the following day, so I met him for coffee in the city. I wouldn’t necessarily say we’re friends, and unless he pays specific attention to the English section of the Leverkusen website, he wouldn’t know I work here now, but I at least managed to get the apology that I owed him out.”

“If the whole school thought he was gay, how come I’ve never heard any sexuality rumours in the media? Surely someone random, with nothing to lose, would sell the story to BILD or something?”

“That’s why I threw myself under the bus and essentially screwed myself from having friends at my new school. I knew about the homophobia and the things that could happen to him if people genuinely thought he was gay, so I stood up on stage in front of the entire year and told them I’d made it all up.”

Kai’s astounded, about to croak out a broken commendation of her bravery when one of the media team’s voices comes calling, Lotta’s face draining white as she yelps a goodbye and before Kai can react, she’s gone, left the door swinging wide open as Kai’s surrounded by the overwhelming stench of unclean muddy boots.

He’d sigh dramatically, but he’s too shaken by the story and how it links into what he’s experiencing now to do anything than robotically wipe the mud off the next cleat he picks up.

• • • • • •

Exactly three days later, the team bus pulls into the bowls of the Rhine-Energie-Stadion in Kӧln, chatter about playing their first derby in a couple of years (Kevin initiates the obligatory chants about Kӧln being shit that Kai abstains from for the first time in his life) dying down when the hear the fan songs echoing from outside the vehicle. It’s a sea of white and red, juxtaposing Leverkusen’s red and black, rising up and suffocating Kai with the smoke of flares the second he steps off the bus. It’s the thrum of excitement, the will to deliver. It’s what got him this far, when his emotionality threatened to strand him far from his dreams. It’s games like this that remind him who he is, even when his world fell apart.

The fans are what provide the atmosphere, but he can’t be more grateful the bus has deposited them only a couple of steps from the door. It doesn’t give them time to lay their eyes on him and yell abuse, love, whatever they fucking want, in his direction before he’s disappeared out of earshot, passing the employees of Leverkusen’s biggest rivals who look at him with forced-polite smiles. It isn’t until he almost collides with someone that he utters a word.

“Sorry,” he mumbles immediately, looking up to see Jonas Hector staring back at him, “um, hi, Jonas.”

“Hey, kid,” the Kӧln captain smiles, ruffling his hair gently, laughter ringing in Kai’s ears as he strains to move away from the aesthetically derogatory attack, “how are you?”

“I’m doing okay,” he smiles weakly, “you?”

“Good, thank you. You’ve been doing so well recently, I’d be delighted for you if you didn’t play for the irrelevant city,” Jonas says, winking slightly, before moving into conversation with Jonathan. He’s so softly spoken, so committed, so dedicated, he is the epitome of loyalty and humility, not at all like the stereotypes of professional footballers and maybe that’s what Kai admires about him the most. 

Sometimes, confidence oozes through the dressing room before the warmup, but this time, there’s stony silence. Partly due to Kai, the relationship between the players is fractured, plus they can hear the anti-Leverkusen chants they don’t hear anywhere else, gradually getting louder from the stands directly above the room. There must be Leverkusen fans trying to counteract it, but Kai couldn’t hear them even if he bothered to strain his ears trying.

“Good to know they still think they’re worthy of calling us shit,” Mitch mutters as he’s passing Kai to take his place on the substitutes bench due to his injury, an offer of friendship. Kai makes some agreeable comment in acceptance, nodding at Jonas who’s leading his team out of the opposing room.

If there was such time for niceties before the warmup, if any more of the players had the motivation to expend them, both of which dissipate when Bosz commandeers Kai’s teammates into the dressing room after the warmup, during which the stadium already erupted with cheers and heckles swirling around in his head and in reality when they were passing balls around, even with no more purpose than avoiding injury. The tension is so palpable, Kai could touch it if he wanted to.

“This is your massive game,” Bosz begins, voice raising to silence any remaining hushed conversations. “They might be chain locked to the foot of the table, but you all know that form goes out of the window during a derby, you could play like you did when you beat Bayern last season and they’d still outscore you, or it could be a stalemate until the ninety-fourth minute. I know that, and I don’t care so long as every single one of you puts everything you have into this. It has not been our easiest week, but I believe in you and your conditioning. There’s nothing more any of us can do now, it’s all down to you.”

That final sentence is something Bosz mantras every week, intended to enthuse the rising urge of motivation that swells across everyone in the dying minutes prior to a match, but it falls flat, or at least in Kai. He’s apathetic towards everything that isn’t scoring five today.

Still, he quietly reverberates the cries from the rest of the team when they line up in the tunnel, eyes fixating on some red spot in the distance. He’s braced for war, and fucking hell is he going to get it.

Like they did in the warmup, the noise that erupts as his feet touch the grass feels personalised for him. 

From the kick-off, it’s evident that it isn’t going to be a free-flowing game. Within the opening ten minutes, Jonathan fouls one of the Kӧln attackers, who could win an Oscar for his dramatics. The stoppages deny any of them the chance to ease into slick football, the fans irate at the subpar quality from both teams, the slowly growing anger possessed by the entire stadium would be enough to light it ablaze. 

Kai’s consciousness is like a cinema reel, playing scene by scene with connection, but it feels scripted, useless, so he doesn’t really follow the game whenever he doesn’t have the ball at his feet. He dispossesses the Kӧln holding midfielder and attempts to play in Kevin, only to have Jonas snuff out the one half-decent chance Leverkusen have the entire half, and even then, it’s not exactly got the fans standing in anticipation.

“Fraught is the only word capable of describing what’s going on out there,” Bosz says levelly when they all desolately emerge in the dressing room. Somehow, it doesn’t feel like the half had really ended, that Leverkusen really have just passed it between them for forty-five minutes, no desire to create anything. As if he’s inserted into Kai’s head, sucking the thoughts into the room, Bosz continues, “you’re holding the ball, they can’t score if you’ve got it, but I was very disappointed in the lack of desire to fucking do anything with it. Full-backs, I need you to help force the opposite attackers back, use your space to help Kai, Kevin, whoever, make a chance for us. The defenders have been solid, but you need to stop your shape from cracking. Kai, you need to be _in _the game even when the defenders are just keeping the ball. There’s been a couple of occasions where there’s been space that you’d normally see, and you’re just not using it this afternoon. Kevin---,”

Completely in contradiction to the corrections he’d just received, Kai zones out while Bosz does his individual criticisms. He should be more concerned about the quality of his performance, not wanting to be subbed out, but he’s still got that selfish hunger fizzing in his veins, something he views as having derailed from the original five goals plan. Something to make him remember this match.

Hence, when the call for the second half rings from outside the locker room (seriously, it’s a fucking goat bleating, could they get any more shameless?), Kai’s the first out, cleats thudding against the floor, almost militaria in repetition, in determination. His teammates are riding a completely different wavelength, he thinks, when Kӧln, rejuvenated by whatever half-time talk they were subjected to, swipes the ball within three seconds and begin charging towards Leverkusen’s goal. 

They don’t score immediately, Kai blocking off the desired next pass and sprinting back upfield with Kevin supporting, but for some fucking stupid reason, his pass is weak and Jonas intercepts. Kӧln seem to be attempting to nullify Leverkusen with intense periods of possession, finally winning out when Jonas nips into the box, lofting a shot over Jonathan’s head and Lukas’ outstretched hand, slotting directly in the top corner and the stadium pretty much explodes.

Bosz is screaming louder than anyone for them to reclaim possession, but the more they’re wasteful with their chances, the more Kӧln’s winning belief seems to inhibit them. Kai’s surprised he hasn’t been substituted off, but Bosz seems to be more impressed with his efforts, and finally, it pays off. It isn’t until the ninetieth minute that Wendell nabs the ball, passing it through to Kerem, Kai sprinting down the centre of the field to receive the ball that has ended up with Kevin. They’re still a long way from the goal, this is not Kai’s territory, but the clock is ticking down, they might lose the chance because the defenders are circulating and they’re the prey, so he swings a leg down, watches the ball curve in an arc, and somehow it dips, kissing the underside of the crossbar as it ricochets beautifully against the back of the net.

It is the best goal of his life, and the minority of Leverkusen fans in the corner of the stadium almost outdo the Kӧln fans in pure volume of raucous noise as Kai races back for the restart, not satisfied with only tying the game.

He has to be, in the end, because there isn’t time for another chance.

At some point, in the midst of all the congratulations from his team and the interviews, it becomes apparent that they’re all convening at some Kӧln nightclub for post-game drinks. He’s not sure who agreed to it, but he’s in the mood to get drunk, so he climbs into one of the Kӧln players cars and tries not to have a heart attack when they pass through the village where he sucked off Luca and the other guy.

“What’s the celebration?” Jonathan, sitting in the front seat, asks. 

“I don’t think there is one,” the Kӧln player, who Kai learns is called Marcel, “but apparently it was an old tradition after the derby, so Jonas suggested we bring it back.”

Kai doesn’t understand how every other member of the car finds that hilarious, but he forces a laugh that’s quiet enough to be concealed by the noise of the rest. He’s sure someone might make a joke about his age, wants to rebut it with stories of getting wasted with Julian and Sam at sixteen, yet he’s suppressed by his own doubts beginning to creep back in and paralyse him with the precarious precursor to a panic attack.

Alcohol cures it, at least for the moment, so by the time they pull into an unfamiliar, empty club (Kai supposes someone must have hired it out prematurely), Kai’s gasping to drown it in shots of vodka. It’s unhealthy, but the alternative is far worse, breaking down in front of his teammates and the players of his rival club, who would probably have a field day celebrating the instability of the ‘star player,’ so he grabs Kevin (the notorious party animal) and makes him take three shots before most of the team have even arrived.

“Starting early?” Jonas teases as he walks past, flashing his car keys and accepting the soft drink the bartender makes for him with a smile. Kai knows the older player doesn’t mean any harm, but he can’t help but feel as though the comment was designed to aggravate him, sullen sulk settling in his stomach as he listens to Kevin chirp something friendly-cutting back. Jonas eyes Kai with concern, starting to voice something that Kai ignores with another shot.

He makes his way to the bathroom, and he’s sure Jonas asks Kevin who Kai’s best friend on the team is. Sure enough, by the time Kai returns, pissing not doing anything to make him relax, Jonas, frown formed in his eyebrows, is deep in discussion with a sober Mitch, who must have arrived at some point.

Their conversation is amplified to Kai, even when he tries not to listen. Things are moving too fast, apparently, he’s already been at the club for an hour, he’s got no idea how long he spent in the bathroom cubicle, sitting on the toilet seat and staring at the locked door, wishing he was somewhere else. Julian’s name, how horrible it sounds in Mitch’s voice with the fucking _friendship _that he doesn’t try to hide in his tone, he knows they’re talking about the symptoms Kai is showing. 

The alcohol is attacking his brain, making his heart beat faster, churning his stomach with a relentless violence, Mitch’s voice revealing all of Kai’s melodramatics taunting him in the background no matter how badly he desires to tune it out, Jonas saying something about “knowing the pain,” when “Toni moved to Madrid and I realised I was in love with him,” and _fucking fantastic_, that’s another person Mitch has outed him to.

Lotta’s hanging around, and she’s brought into their conversation expertly. Music’s playing, some club tune with a low thump that syncs with the throbs in Kai’s head, the one that multiplies with the alcohol already in his blood and makes him stumble across the bar and towards the door.

He’s caught by Jonas, and it might be the most amount of panic he’s ever felt. He can feel his control slipping, fear rising to capture him, knows that _he really hasn’t fucking turned a corner_, and this is who he is now, a weak, frail, panicky idiot who needs mothering by fucking everyone.

“I’m worried about you---,” he thinks Jonas says, “Mitch says your mental health is deteriorating, and I wanted to see if you needed any sup--,”

Kai lurches forward, fast and sudden enough to evade Jonas’ clutches and fall towards the doorframe. Screams of his name echo over the music, messages of his attack already circulating, someone’s trying to hold his shoulders, calling him, but he shakes them off, and suddenly all he can hear is Julian’s voice in the wind the night Kai ran through the Leverkusen streets after their confrontation. He’s the only one calling his name, maybe it’s coming from the other direction of the club, Kai needs to reach him, to apologise, to beg forgiveness and confess everything, hear what Julian really thinks of him.

His footsteps moving down the stairs leading out of the sweltering building are tentative, somehow managing not to trip as his mind focuses on the synthetic voice, getting louder as it runs towards his brain with the panic and alcohol infused blood, swirling into the nerves. Everything is moving too fast, maybe it was five minutes ago he was in the locker room at half-time, hearing Bosz eviscerate him for lack of focus, and now he’s here, supposedly celebrating his special equaliser. Things shouldn’t move that fast. He has no idea how they have, if they did, what's going on, just that _fucking Jonas Hector _wants to talk to him about his panic attacks, he doesn't _want_ to talk, he’s avoided Sven all week for that precise reason, he wants everyone to know they’re nothing to worry about, just Kai struggling a little with the pressure. It’s not real, they don’t need to worry when Julian never cared for his feelings either.

_Julian. _He’s still fucking calling for Kai.

He hits flat ground as the poisoned blood comes into effect, someone, now not Julian, screaming his name is the last thing he's able to make out, right before the worst thing imaginable finally happens.

Everything goes black.


End file.
